Desvelao 2017 12.5%, Cuatro Ojos Wines

Appearance
Bright pale golden straw with the faintest hint of green and golden highlights.
Nose
Intense and super fresh aroma of Moscatel with lots of fruit notes like mandarin, kiwi and peach with hints of white flowers and tea. There is a faint mineral note and a trace of flor which add a balancing and slightly more serious note, but all told, a lovely nose.
Palate
Clean, fresh and zippy with an attractive tangy yet balanced acidity, and there is lots of that mandarin fruit along with a slight apple note and a very slightly bitter edge and a dry chalky texture. This is delicious, pure and very refreshing with good length.
Comments

This is the second commercial vintage of Desvelao, a wine  made the artisan way by the three Cuatro Ojos girls in their small bodega in El Puerto de Santa María. It is a fairly unusual style of wine being 100% Moscatel de Alejandría but fermented dry, and it works really well. The grapes come from the albariza soils of Finca La Blanquita in the pago Balbaína where they are hand-picked and pressed, and the must is then taken to the bodega. This must is used to make 3 wines: Contra Tiempo, Molinero and Desvelao, but they are made in slightly different ways. It is fermented at low temperature with natural yeast for a couple of days before the addition of selected yeast and Desvelao has the added flavour imparted by flor yeast during 3 months of ageing in tank on the lees. The wine is bottled without filtration and rested in bottle for a couple of months before sale. Only around 400 bottles produced. I do wish they would put the vintage on the label, albeit this one is different to last year's.

Price
15.50, De Albariza

Desvelao 2016 11%, Cuatro Ojos Wines

Appearance

Pale lemony gold with a faint green tinge and golden highlights.

Nose

Forthcoming and super fresh with all the fragrance of Moscatel. Lots of floral notes with citrus blossom and honeysuckle and then there are the fruit notes with pear and a hints of lime peel and lemon icing, yet behind that impressive nose are very slight saline and mineral hints and a distant trace of bitterness from flor.

Palate

Just as impressive on the palate with perfectly judged acidity driving all that fruit and a gentle hint of green tea. The wine is dry and quite light with a very light dry chalky texture, a clean minerality and a slightly bitter saline trace which betray the albariza where the vines grew and the flor under which it was aged briefly - only just enough to be noticeable.

Comments

The brand name Desvelao is a play on words. Desvelar means to reveal but here it means taken from under the velo (veil) of flor, yet the wine is a revelation and something very unusual being Moscatel grown in albariza, and this is the first release. It is basically the same wine as the lees aged Molinero but with the time spent on lees spent also under flor for a period of around three months. It is made by three girls with great ideas and considerable skill in El Puerto de Santa Maria.

Price
20,50 Licores Corredera