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Manzanilla de añada 2012 – 4 and 5 of 11 – in Sagrario Tradición

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Special wines these two – wines from the 4th and 5th botas of a series of 11 that together make up a unique and historic project.

After a bumper harvest in 2012 the guys at Callejuela out aside 11 botas and every year since 2015 have been releasing wines from selected botas. As a project it has everything – it allows you to understand the effect of flor, oxidation, bottle time – and it proved to be the first of many by the enterprising guys at Callejuela. And although the wines are from a single añada they show off the fine, expressive character of an añada wine.

This is not the first time I have tried four or five (we are now on six) but the year or two in the bottle have served them well and if anything the differences seem even clearer. Four is a freshly sharpened manzanilla – dry, punchy and all that chamomile, and while five is still zingy and punchy it has just a touch of roasted apple and, by comparison, is a richer wine.

Lovely stuff and I just can’t wait for six and seven.

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Solear en rama – Spring 2015 – the Oropéndola

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There is still a feeling of sacrilege when I open these little bottles that have been stashed away these last few years but the regret doesn’t outlast the first mouthfull.

What an astonishingly nice wine – it really is the archetypal dry sherry. Beautiful gold colour, lovely haybales and yeast on the nose, zingy salinity and fresh yeasty juice on the palate, and the mouth just sallivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

This bottle is from when it was still bottled as a mere “manzanilla” but it really is a manzanilla pasada – you can feel it in the concentration and the intensity of the flavours.

Wonderful stuff.

Solear en rama, saca de invierno 2013

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As I have occasionally published, a fellow has accumulated a pretty large collection of these little bottles over the years but, no more. They may or may not improve in the bottle, but the only way to enjoy them is once they are out of it. Plus I have a famously small vinoteca and these little bottles are annoyingly fiddly to store. When you add to the equation the fact that the wines inside them are right up my alley, their life expectancy is in the basement with no takers.

First to go to the block is my oldest – this effort from winter 2013, the aguja colinegra or black tailed godwit.

Nearly seven years later it is lovely stuff, and proof of one of my deep held beliefs on the bottle ageing debate: the better the wine, the better it will stand the passing of the years. Lovely and rich in colour and on the nose, still zingy first up and full of juice on the palate, with just a hint of that incense bitterness that can develop in older manzanillas before a buzzy, mouthwatering saline finish.

None of this is doing any good for the chances of survival of the others it must be said …

Socaire 2017

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One of the fine wines of an exciting new era. Chateau Matalian Grand Cru, a lovely white-fruit flavoured white wine

And when I say flavour I really mean it because when you become accustomed to the range of flavours in these white wines from Andalucia you miss half of the graph when you step outside the bubble. Not just the salinity but stewy, vegetable and herb flavours.

This, as you can see, is the 2017 – these latest vintages have the year on the label as our man Primitivo chips away at the wall of resistance that is the Consejo Regulador with two powerful arguments: quality and sales.

This wine is an argument in itself. Not as ferocious as the first vintage I tried and maybe not as spicey as last year’s, this is ripe and elegant and frankly excellent. In fact to me this wine shows just how the Socaire wines have matured: no longer a curiosity or an experiment in a sherry barrel, but a high quality white wine in its own right.

I love it and I strongly recommend that you find some, buy it and enjoy it, or if you prefer, keep it a few years – it will almost certainly improve (for some reason the bottles in my cellar keep disappearing).

La Bota de Fino 91 – Saca of February 2019

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Never has there been a better argument for smellovision than these cracking finos by Equipo Navazos.

The latest iteration of a wine that previously gave us Botas number 2, 32, 54 and 68, this is right up there with the most spectacular finos on the market. The wine here was originally sourced from probably the most important fino solera around – Inocente by Valdespino – but has been in the capable hands of Messrs Ojeda and Barquin a goodly time by now.

It really has a fantastic nose. I find these Equipo Navazos finos even more explosive when new released but even after a year in the bottle this is one of the most fragrant wines on the market – loads of hay bales and verging towards chamomile and herbs.

But it isn’t just the nose – has a lovely full body to it – whichever bota they liberated had a good bed of cabezuelas – and almost as much expression on the palate, with nuts in there but also sweet herbs and bakery.

Superb stuff from start to finish. But I am not going to finish it just yet …

Solear en Rama Summer 2016 – the Marbled Teal

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Difficult to top this, one of my favourite sacas of one of the best manzanillas around, in a magnum, and thanks to social distancing, none of those annoying close range socializers wanting to share it.

When reviewing my flock of Solear en Rama for repeats it struck me that I had seen this marbled teal somewhere before and indeed I have another. Faced with the decision of whether to drink the magnum or half bottle well, I thought about it for nearly a quarter of a second …

Almost too good to drink. Now a manzanilla pasada, but more manzanilla than pasada. It is not as fruity oxidized or as heavy as many, really fresh with a wonderful piercing nose and just a solid slab of manzanilla flavour: flavours of sea air and spicey, peppery rocket salad with a fresh finish.

There is a saying here that a good salad should be well salted (una buena ensalada sera bien salada) and this is certainly that. The biological is there at start and finish – zing to begin and swish to end – and in between you have those oily, peppery sensations on bready flavours – cobs of bread you use to mop up the dressing.  

A living legend. And by living, I mean the solera, because you won’t be seeing this bottle no more.

Solear en rama Saca de Invierno 2019 – the Ruddy Shelduck

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Reacquainted with these recently and after a Wednesday night dominated by Jerez lunch on Thursday kicked off with a tribute to the finest of Sanlucar (and Doñana). Adorned on this occasion by the Ruddy Shelduck, a rare sight in Andalucia and considered sacred by the hindus.

This solera should probably be considered sacred by everyone. One of the consistently excellent wines from Sanlúcar this was in fact the first glass from a magnum in Angelita Madrid and it was a beauty.

The intensity of minerals and salad greenery in this wine always take me back – it seems so biological in every sense it must be good value for at least two of your five a day. From a recent bottling these wines have real zip up front a salty, peppery finish that really invites another glass, and another, etc

A classic manzanilla, complex as you like but fresh and full of life.  

Atlántida Blanco 2016

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Your correspondent had this for the first time a while ago now (a year?) at a cracking lunch in Zalamero Taberna and another fun lunch with the same person inspired me to have a second dip.

It is a wine by Compañias de Vino del Atlantico, your man Alberto Orte, who has by now built up a bit of an empire spanning the Spanish peninsula but is beloved of this parish for his wines in the region of Jerez.

He has a nice little tintilla that goes by the name of vara y pulgar – a nice reference to pruning for the gardener’s world crowd – and some really top class finos and upwards, but this is a Vijariego blanco.

Yes indeed, one of your good old Vijariegos – one of the 119 varieties around in Jerez pre-phyloxera and apparently resuscitated to good effect here. It has had 12 months or more in oak and it is a bomb of flavour alright – the extra year in the bottle has brought it on even more compared to my first meeting with it.

They compared it to white burgundy and it has that feel of a broad on the beam chardonnay but with more sharp edges to it – real devil in there, almost as if it was one of these volcanic Canary wines. And of course none of the lime cordial of a chardonnay – here you have an altogether more grapefruity undertow.

Full flavour and full on. Would be fascinating to see how this develops over the years.

La Escribana Vino de Pasto 2018 in Angelita Madrid

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Your correspondent has been out of the game too long. Probably a good few weeks since I was at the trough in earnest – time enough for at least three new labels to emerge from the hyperactive young dynamos down in Jerez and Sanlucar.

And here is one. The latest from Willy Perez, this appears to be an unfortified white wine – the label says from Macharnudo on tosca de Barajuelas soil. “Only” 13 and a half degrees and I don’t know much about it but would guess we have a bit of asoleo or a relatively late harvest. (Vino de pasto translates more or less as table wine so no clues there.)

It is another cracker from the young Wise King of Jerez. Concentrated white fruit – almost pineapple upfront, and bitter pineapple marmalade at the back. It is mineral for a white wine – real zing and warmth around the mouth – but tasty and jammy rather than fresh and slippy on the finish. As its name indicates, it is a table wine – this would stand up and be counted in almost any company.

Another one please barman!

Fino Inocente in Zalamero Taberna

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With all the new wines, labels and makers emerging in Jerez sometimes it is easy to forget the classics – the mountains in the background of the painting.

This fino is just such a classic. Possibly the most traditional, old school fino on the market and one that nevertheless ticks modern boxes: single pago and fermented in oak, it may be from one of the big producers but it is the antithesis of industrial.

And if you are going to be single pago, this is the one to be: Macharnudo. The most famous real estate in Jerez, and the fount of some of the best wines ever made in el marco. Of which, let’s be honest this is one.

Because it has everything you could ask of a fino. An aromatic nose of sea breeze, fresh baked bread and almond, then a palate of all those things but edged around with zingy salinity and a long, fresh, sea breeze and mineral finish.

Really top class.