Monday 2 January 2017

Oloroso El Galeón VOS 22%, Sánchez Ayala

Appearance
Bright, copper tinged mahogany fading through amber to a faint trace of green at the rim, legs.
Nose
Very refined, taut and fragrant, nutty with a slight saline streak and a hint of old oak balanced with a hint of implied sweetness and a trace of cinnamon and salted caramel. This is precise, elegant, multi-faceted and very inviting as it gently opens out.
Palate
Far from the simple generosity of some Olorosos, this wine is perfectly poised and supremely elegant, proudly showing its Sanlúcar origins. It is clean and polished with none of the rough tannic varnishy edges old wines can have yet all the complexity, good and dry with a certain acidity yet with enough glycerol to round it off along with terrific length.
Comments
Harvested, pressed and fermented at the firm's own vineyards in the Pago Balbaina, this superb Oloroso is aged for at least twenty years (but I suspect much longer) in the bodega Santa Inés through three criaderas and the solera, from which there is only one annual saca. This one was August 2016 and was bottled en rama. The illustration on the label is rather indistinct but shows a very old receipt for the purchase of the old bodega San Pedro in 1798 from the Marqués de Arizón by the Vicario Iñigo family, cargadores de Indias based in Cádiz.
Price
32 euros per 50cl bottle from Er Guerrita




No comments:

Post a Comment