Strawy, fairly pale gold, very light legs.
Nose
Soft, fresh and yeasty. Some sea breezes and quite a lot of flor with a dry, bitter edge, salty, almondy, quite deep and complex but stops short of manzanilla pasada - deep but no autolysis. The emphasis is on dry, both in lack of sugar and in feel, hints of dry scrub, chamomile flowers, even traces of quince and olive. Nice.
Palate
Good and dry with quite bitter flor flavours like straw on toast, saline and almondy, quite full and very clean, REALLY gives you an appetite, long, bitter tangy finish with a savoury hint. Lovely, and SO much more interesting than the standard La Gitana.
Comments
Top notch Manzanilla. The total sugar content is 0.03 grams per litre - very dry. Many table wines have up to, say, 6 g/l residual sugar and you wouldn't really notice it. But here we have flor consuming it. The wine comes from 200 or so hectares owned by Hidalgo in Miraflores and Balbaina vineyards, and the winemaker is Antonio Sanchez. To me, the difference between manzanilla "fina" (filtered commercial manzanilla) and this unfiltered example really shows the difference, and how well worth while it is to buy "en rama".
Price
About £15.00 for 75cl. from Villeneuve Wines in Edinburgh. UK agents Mentzendorff
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