Fino del Maestro Sierra La Bota de Ana

Appearance

Fairly deep brassy gold with bright gold glints, legs.

Nose

Full and deep and very serious. Rich, soft, mature with lots of cabezuela notes and some autolysis but zipped up a little by some gently yeasty and bitter flor top notes. This is classic Jerez Fino with hints of wax and  straw, fairly low acid and a certain weight, justifying the term "vino generoso". It smells wonderful, it's just so intense and classy.

Palate 

Big and beautifully rounded, packed with flavour, hints of umami and a gentle texture. Very dry with complex flavours as much from the bottom of the butt as from the top. This is absolutely delicious with terrific length and dangerously easy to drink. One of the best I've ever tasted.

Comments

This very special and highly interesting wine even has a twin, La Bota de Paco (qv). As everyone knows, no two butts in a solera will taste exactly the same, each one has its own micro environment, and that is one of the most fascinating things about Sherry. When running the scales of a solera, one can blend the wine extracted from a given criadera before refreshing the next one, thus achieving more commercial homogeneity. Or you can not do that, and simply refresh from the butt above which will hopefully maintain these subtle differences. Ana Cabestrero, like any good oenologist, knows this and monitors things carefully. So rather than simply blend away wine from particularly good butts in the solera, she and Paco Salas, also an oenologist and friend of the bodega, chose their favourites and bottled a minute quantity of each - 20 bottles - direct from each butt by hand with no filtration at all. The two chosen butts are in different areas of the bodega with very slightly different atmospheres. The labelling is interesting too, with an old Fino label and an extra handwritten one with the details, which are: andana (row) 5, butt 3, bottle 8/20, filled November 2016 and signed. They did leave one detail out; the alcoholic strength, but I don't care.

Price
50 euros from Licores Corredera

The bottle.....

and the butt