Tinto García de la Jara 2017 12.5%, Hermanas García Saborido

Appearance

Dense, opaque black with very tight young purple rim with a hint of ruby.

Nose

Still a little closed but lots of attractive fresh ripe slightly fleshy black berry fruit and a slightly salty coastal air. The oak is barely noticeable but its softening oxidative effect is, and there are faint spice and balsamic notes giving a moderate complexity which can only increase over time.

Palate

Full bodied with a solid structure and while there is noticeable tannin it is ripe and not at all aggressive. Gently tangy acidity is perfectly balanced with the sweetness of the ripe fruit and there is a distinct salty note which gives more of a dry feel than the tannin. Long clean finish.

Comments

The García Saborido family has worked its vineyard, only 300 metres from the beach in Sanlúcar and with sandy chalky soil, for decades and it was the younger members of the family, Carmen, Rocío and Martín who decided to make a good red wine - the first and only from Sanlúcar. The hat on the label is a homage to their grandfather who originally planted the vineyard which is farmed organically has a little orchard/vegetable patch alongside.The wine is made mostly from Petit Verdot with a hint of Tannat, Merlot, Syrah and a few old local varieties. The grapes are hand picked, selected and fermented in tank before three months ageing in used French oak. This is a classic red meat wine, delicious and interesting, but needs a year or two more in bottle to open out fully. Great value for money.

Price

7.95 euros, De Albariza

Vino Blanco Bijuré 2018 12%, Coop Albarizas

Appearance

Fairly pale strawy gold with golden highlights.

Nose

Fresh, forthcoming and attractive with lots of ripe fruit like apple, quince and apricot and traces of white flowers, honeysuckle and even a faint honeyed note. There is a certain generosity to it and a touch more complexity than Palomino alone would offer; those traditional old grape varieties really make a difference.

Palate

There is some depth here and the roundness of that ripe fruit is backed up with refreshing acidity giving it a pleasant tanginess. Then there is the classic Trebujena salinity giving a nice tension with the fruit and that dry chalky texture. Really good and interesting wine for the money.

Comments

This is the second release of Bijuré after last year´s very successful launch to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Albarizas Cooperative in Trebujena. It is a very interesting - not to say delicious - wine as it is made from old vine vidueño - a blanket term for other old traditional varieties which include Perruno, Mantúa, Barcelonés, Castellano, Cañocazo, Beba etc. and perhaps a little Palomino - all grown in albariza soils overlooking the area´s Guadalquivir marshland. The must was co-fermented in old butts seasoned with Fino, Amontillado and Oloroso before minimal stabilisation and bottling in late December. Only 3,000 bottles were produced. The wine can´t have any appellation status because of its use of no longer permitted varieties - or indeed the lack of a DO - but it is great to see them being used to such good effect. Maybe that is why Williams & Humbert buy some 50% of their production. Bijuré is a gypsy word for golden.

Price

11.70, De Albariza

12 Liños 2017 12%, Viña Armijo

Appearance
Bright paleish strawy gold with golden reflections.

Nose

Generous, fresh and appley with gentle traces of a coastal country meadow with grasses and herbs like camomile and a hint of apple skin texture. There is the faintest oxidative note which adds a little gravitas, roundness and complexity and there is no obvious flor.

Palate

Fairly full and well rounded with perfect balance and lots of ripe apple. There is a hint of that apple skin texture along with the dry chalky slightly saline feel so typical of wines grown on albariza yet the finish is long, clean and fruity with lots of Sanlúcar character, very satisfying.

Comments

This lovely wine is really expressive of its origins and comes from just 12 rows of vines (liños) in the Viña Armijo vineyard which belongs to the Florido family of Gaspar Florido fame, and was the source of those great wines. The vineyard is located in the eastern part of the pago Miraflores and the casa de viña dates back to the XVII century. Winemaking is supervised by Ramiro Ibáñez and the wine is 100% old vine Palomino which is aged for a few months in well seasoned old Manzanilla butts filled almost full to minimise flor. This is a classic Vino Blanco de Sanlúcar with a good heritage and is the second release, now in a Burgundy-shaped bottle filled on 24 the April 2018.

Price
14.50, De Albariza

Ispania 2017 12%, ViD Soluciones Enogastronómicas SL

Appearance
Fairly full brassy gold with golden highlights.

Nose

Full, complex, interesting and slightly different with lots of ripe apple up front and a certain almost creamy richness with traces of dried yellow fruits like apricot, raisin and papaya along with wax, straw and background hints of salinity and a barely perceptible Sherryish note. Extremely attractive.

Palate

Quite full and very tasty with real character. The acidity is very slightly higher than expected from the nose and enhances those yellow fruit notes with a gentle tang balanced by noticeable glycerine while the balance between the apple and other fruits is more equal. It has a welcome slightly old fashioned style and tastes good and ripe yet it is also good and dry with the characteristic chalky albariza texture. This is lovely.

Comments

ViD Soluciones Enogastronómicas SL is a firm run by Raul Villabrille, César Dominguez and Omar Suárez which offers a consultation service in all aspects of running wine shops and restaurants including wine education, lists, business management etc. based in Conil. They are also actively involved in seeking out unique and interesting wines in the province of Cádiz, and elsewhere, which they distribute, and also get involved in winemaking projects such as this one: Emplazamientos Ispania.  In this case the emplazamiento (location) is Trebujena. It is a white wine produced mainly with Palomino but also some old vine vidueño, the umbrella name for other local grape varieties, from the albariza vineyards of the many small growers who are members of the Trebujena cooperative Las Albarizas. It was vinified by hand by Andrés Herrera Campos at the coop and aged for 12 months in three ex Amontillado and Oloroso butts seasoned over decades. The wine, of which there are only 1,460 bottles sealed with Diam corks, was launched in December 2018.

Price
15 euros, Licores Corredera

Xaldenil 2015 14%, Finca Las Mesetas

Appearance
Very deep, opaque black plummy red tight to the rim where there is still some pink.
Nose

Syrah and Cabernet jump out with smokey mulberry and blackcurrant aromas. Still fairly tight but with lovely fresh fruit and a faint jammy note along with a hint of pencil from the French oak and a balsamic trace, this is full bodied, perfectly ripe and really quite intense and looks very promising for further ageing in bottle.

Palate

Big and generous with no shortage of character it has plenty of almost chewy texture, and while there is plenty of structure, the tannins are ripe and completely unaggressive. There is a slightly balsamic edge to the copious black fruit (from a hot place) and that hint of oak and a noticeable and refreshing minerality, but everything is very well balanced. This is a serious wine, very well made with considerable length, but unfortunately in short supply.

Comments

This wine comes from the small and pretty town of Setenil de las Bodegas, located  at over 600 metres altitude in the Sierra de Cádiz, surely the highest vineyards in the province. The town sits on a river which has carved out a spectacular gorge leaving overhanging rock which has provided people with homes since very ancient times. Sadly the bodegas were wiped out by phylloxera and only the town´s name gives any idea they ever existed. Here the Camacho family have a 1.3 hectare vineyard planted to Syrah, Cabernet and Merlot and winemaking is done by oenologist Santiago Jordi. This was the second vintage of Xaldenil, made with 45% Syrah, 35% Cabernet and 20% Merlot, and it was aged for 6 months in used French oak barrels. Naturally production is small, at just 2,400 bottles. This is one of two wines they produce, the other being called 7 Mil Pasos. The family also have a shop, La Cueva del Iberico, selling ham, oils, cheeses etc. and of course wine.

Price

13.50 Licores Corredera

Vino Tinto Pideme un Deseo NV 13%, World Vinum Spain

Appearance
Very deep, almost opaque black cherry red fading to a blacky pink at the rim.
Nose
Fairly high toned with a slightly tangy, balsamic note and lots of fruit, mainly black cherry and plum with a hint of blackcurrant. There is a certain degree of ripeness along with a hint of oak and a background trace of smoke, from the Syrah one presumes. Not overly complex but not unattractive.
Palate
Mid weight, with a gently spicy character and nicely textured with a touch of ripe tannin which balances nicely with the abundant fruit and a slight chalky feel from the albariza. Acidity is noticeable but works well to give the wine a certain freshness. While it is a little on the light and short side it is very easy drinking with a bit of character.
Comments

This wine is a bit of a novelty perhaps, but it is good. "Pideme un Deseo" means "ask me for a wish" and in a little bag tied to the neck of the bottle are two little "wish papers" and instructions to write your wishes on them and set fire to them, throwing the burning papers to the winds, where one imagines the spirits will receive them and grant your wishes. Anyway, the wine is made and bottled by EMC3 in El Puerto de Santa Maria from Syrah and Merlot grown in albariza soil which are hand picked and selected. They are macerated for 10 days and then fermented before being transferred to butts where the fermentation is completed and the wine is aged there for four months. If you were wondering if this novelty had a Chinese ring to it, you were right. While World Vinum is a Jerez company with a bodega in Calle Ceniza which distributes wines and spirits in Spain, it sees a lucrative market in China, where they have a distribution office in Guangzhou. They produced 8,000 bottles of this wine, half of which went to China. NV means non-vintage, and this is yet another example of wines with no vintage declared on the label. It will be 2016 or 2017 though, as the wine was first made in 2016.

Price
10.95, Licores Corredera

Vino Blanco La Riva 2016 13.5%, M Ant. De La Riva

Appearance
Mid strawy brassy gold with golden highlights.
Nose
The first thing you notice is seriousness: depth and a good degree of ripeness; most Palomino table wines are 12% and lack this depth and intensity. It reminded me slightly of a fine Burgundy, Meursault possibly - it certainly has that level of class, and faint oxidative nuttiness. There are as many fruit notes as those of flor with very ripe/stewed apple and quince balancing the bitter ones of the flor. It has a slight orchard air about it with some wild herbs growing nearby, and also a distinct nod to Fino. It is very complex, intense and beautiful.
Palate
This is way more complex and concentrated than any white table wine I have come across so far in Cádiz. It has a lovely chalky grapeskin texture and a gentle tension between that lovely ripe fruit and just a little bitter flor edge. It is clean with reasonably low acidity and lingers for ages. No new French oak barrels necessary for complexity here, just outstanding grapes and winemaking - the way it was done in the past. It makes you realise how much has been lost, and how important Ramiro's and Willy's work is in recuperating it. This wine is utterly superb.
Comments

This stunning wine was made by Ramiro Ibáñez and Willy Pérez for their new brand, M Antonio de la Riva, for which they bought the rights. The original firm was famed for quality and they want to maintain that, and have got off to a great start with Oloroso and Moscatel (just 90 half bottles) Viejisimos and an outstanding Fino. This white wine is made from old Palomino 84 vines grown in the Viña El Notario, located in the northern part of the Viña El Majuelo, owned by Fundador, in the Macharnudo Alto. It is well inland with a warmer climate but has a decent altitude of some 115 metres and fantastic albariza soil composed of tosca cerrada and barajuela. The grapes were harvested by hand in mid September at a very low yield of about half the normal, and sunned for 8 hours, as was the original La Riva practice, which increased the must weight by 1.2 degrees. The grapes were very lightly pressed for maximum quality and the wine was fermented in butt at ambient temperature using flor yeast, and remained in the butt under the flor for 10 months before only 400 bottles were filled in October 2017 en rama and under a fine quality 2 inch driven cork. If you manage to get hold of a bottle, don't over chill it.

Price
35.50 (and worth every centimo) Guerrita

La Fleur 2015 13.5%, Bodegas Forlong

Appearance
Mid depth brassy gold with golden highlights.
Nose
Quite full with pronounced notes of ripe apple and pear skin, it is fairly yeasty but only traces of flor and slight traces of salinity and oxidation, hints of straw and sourdough, along with candied lemon peel, hints, not a million miles from a Fino, yet not, a serious wine though, and different.
Palate

Again, quite full, approaching intense, strawy with a chalky albariza texture and a touch of salinity and a decent acidity. This interesting, complex and fairly unique wine lies somewhere between the Jura and Sherry. It is multifaceted; fresh and zippy, and Sherry-like at the same time, packed with flavour, and it has terrific length.

Comments

Another excellent and interesting wine from this go-ahead young bodega. La Fleur is 100% Palomino grown organically in the finca Forlong in the pago Balbaina Baja. The vineyard, which is close to El Puerto de Santa Maria, once belonged to the XIX century shippers Matthiesen Furlong. After fermentation the wine is allowed to age in a butt for two years under flor before being hand bottled en rama. I was a little surprised at the slight oxidative notes after 2 years under flor, but they do add complexity. Unfortunately, the production is tiny with just 600 bottles. It would be worth keeping for 2-3 years as well. Seek it out!

Price
30 euros per 50cl, Guerrita

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

Molinero 2016 11%, Cuatro Ojos Wines

Appearance
Bright pale golden straw with golden glints.
Nose
Attractive and quite intense Moscatel nose, fragrant - almost perfumed - and very floral with notes of jasmine, citrus blossom and honeysuckle and a definite grapiness with the faintest hints of mineral and salinity.
Palate
Fresh and dry with loads of grapey flavour up front. Acidity is fairly low but you wouldn't really notice as there is a clean mineral backbone which helps maintain balance, and a faint creaminess, and there is a chalky texture too, no doubt from the albariza. It has a long delicate fragrant finish.
Comments

This is the first release of this interesting wine made by three girls in El Puerto de Santa Maria. It is named in honour of their viti-viniculture tutor Araceli Molinero and is made from Moscatel grapes grown in albariza soil. The must is fermented in tank and the wine is aged, surprisingly, in old Amontillado and Oloroso butts for 3 months on its lees before bottling without filtration. It spends two months in numbered bottles before release. A vintage date on the label would be helpful. 

Price
20.50 euros Licores Corredera

Vino Blanco 2015 12%, Navazos Niepoort

Appearance
Bright mid strawy yellow with golden highlights.
Nose

Quite full and subtly complex with a certain richness and noticeable flor bitterness with slight floral and herbal hints like camomile. There are also gentle fruit notes of quince, apple and yellow plum and a touch of mineral. There are even slight Fino notes.

Palate

Full and very tasty. Perfectly balanced acidity with just the right tanginess helped by a zing of flor, lots of appley fruit and minerals and attractive strawy herbal notes. Again a hint of Fino, but more fruit. The finish is long and clean with apple and mineral and a faint bitter flourish.

Comments

Palomino grapes for this excellent wine were picked in the pago Macharnudo and pressed lightly for maximum quality (mosto yema). The must was fermented with indigenous yeast in 40 year old butts where it remained under flor for nearly a year before bottling with minimal filtration in 2017. The idea behind this wine is to reproduce the style that was widely drunk in the area in the XVIII century. Wines for export were generally fortified but for local consumption were not, so this is not unlike a Fino, but without the extra alcohol, and with less time under flor. It now has at least a year in bottle and is opening out nicely, and it should be be rewarding to  keep for at least 5 years.

Price
16.50 euros, Er Guerrita