Mirabrás 2016 13.5%, Barbadillo

Appearance
Deep bright straw gold with golden highlights.
Nose
Serious, with  lots of nuances; fruity ones like apple - even a faint cider-like hint, herbal ones like camomile and fresh straw, traces of flor and a gentle sweeter, almost honey-like tone possibly from the asoleado. Not far removed from Manzanilla with its light marine notes, yet fruitier and with less flor and alcohol. And there is a certain weight to it. Very attractive.
Palate

Tangy apple,bitter hints of flor and a saline note instantly give away its origins and grape variety. There is also a slightly chalky mineral feel and a decent level of acidity which give it a decent bite and some of the classic Sanlucar wildness and probably some bottle ageing potential, especially if the 2014 is anything to go by. Both delicious and interesting.

Comments

The wine is named after the Mirabrás which is a style of Flamenco associated with Sanlúcar, hence the label design. The wine itself is even more interesting, however. It is made the old fashioned way from 100% old vine (45 years old) Palomino grown in the firm's Cerro de Leyes vineyard which is part of their larger Finca Santa Lucia. The grapes are sunned briefly before fermentation using natural yeast in toneles seasoned with Manzanilla. It remains for some 14 months on its lees, without batonnage, in a mix of the same toneles and some tanks where flor is allowed to develop, but to a small extent as the toneles are filled "a tocadedos". It was bottled without filtration in December 2017 and a total of just over 5,000 bottles were available.

Price
16,95 euros, De Albariza

Manzanilla La Guita en rama Oct 2017 15%, La Guita

Appearance
Slightly brassy, yellowy gold with bright brassy gold highlights.

Nose

Highly aromatic and intense with lots of bright, zippy, racy maritime character and a gentle note of oxidation. Seaweed, dry scrub, olive brine and traces of iodine, even cider add to the mix which includes some flor bitterness as well. 

Palate

Full and savoury with plenty flor and lots of sea salt and mineral and decent acidity giving a lively and deeply tasty wine. There is a trace of oxidation and some buttery, nutty autolytic yeastiness which adds more complexity, making it taste more like Manzanilla pasada. This is lovely.
Comments

This second saca of La Guita en rama is just as classic as the first and took place in October 2017 when the flor was judged to be at its best. A rigorous selection was made of wines ageing at both Bodega La Misericordia and Bodega Pago Sanlúcar Viejo, wines which have been aged a bit longer than those for the normal La Guita, being well over 5 years old. They were chosen for their classic Manzanilla character and especially for the intense minerality, salinity and sheer wild expressiveness of La Guita at its best. Absolutely no filtration or stabilisation was done which explains the wine’s slightly darker colour than normal. The image on the label represents the main tower of the mudéjar church of Nuestra Señora de la O dating from 1360. It was here where the few remaining of Magellan’s crew gave thanks for their survival in 1522.

Price
7,90 euros per half bottle, La Tienda del Jerez

Pedro Ximénez en Rama Cruz Vieja 15%, Faustino González

Appearance
Viscous, very deep blacky brown fading to amber at the rim.
Nose
There are lots of raisins and the usual dried fruits and then there is a spicier, very slightly savoury and interesting note of straw or esparto, cardamom, almost curry, which might possibly come from the mats the grapes were dried on. Then it reverts back to all that dried fruit with perhaps a trace of molasses.
Palate
Not quite as unctuous as some, which is a bit of a relief, and there is a healthy balancing acidity giving it good freshness and balance. It has an attractive tang  which is perfect for the sweetness of the fruit and there is absolutely no cloying, so it is rather too easy to drink, and has very good length.
Comments

The bodega launched this delicious wine in time for Christmas 2017. It must be one of very few single vineyard PX wines around and it comes from the family's own vineyard in the Pago Montealegre. The grapes were dried in the sun for 10 days before careful pressing, partial fermentation and fortification, followed by ageing and bottling without filtration. This is their first PX, made in very small quantities, and the result is splendid.

Price
18,90 per half bottle, La Tienda del Jerez

Fine Tempo 2011 14%, Oleum Viride

Appearance

Almost opaque blacky red with a maturing red to brick rim.
Nose
Full with lots of fresh tangy black fruits like bramble, blueberry and plum with a hint of raspberry from perfectly ripened fruit and yet it is beginning to open up and shed a bit of fat. There is a balsamic note with traces of grapeskin and spice from the oak. Good start.
Palate
All that fruit is up front and still covers a good structure with ripe tannins and a certain lean mineral note. There is also a decent acidity which keeps it fresh. This is a really good, natural flavoured wine which is beginning to show some of that grace of maturity and still has a lot of life left in it. It is dry, clean and very long and I look forward to tasting it again.
Comments

This wine comes from a small organic vineyard on a pronounced slope in the Finca Las Lajas planted to Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot in 2005 near the beautiful hill village of Zahara de la Sierra, which overlooks a huge reservoir and is inside the National Park of the Sierra de Grazalema. The main agricultural product here is olives and while Oleum Viride (oleum viride is Latin for green oil) mainly produce olives and oil they also have between 2 and 3 hectares of vineyard on a mix of sandstone and limestone soils which are low in organic matter. The wine is made in a totally artisan manner with no regard whatever for what the market might want; if they like it they bottle it, but 3,000 bottles are as many as they can make. The wines are aged separately in a mix of a dozen barrels of different oaks and different ages for around a year - in a cave! Every barrel turns out something different and the result is a wine with a singular capacity for ageing. The grower is Luis Lucero and the technical consultant is Miguel Gómez Lucas.The wine is contract bottled by Compañía General de Vinos de Cádiz in Arcos de la Frontera and sent back to the cave for some bottle age. It is gaining a local reputation for quality and has won a couple of medals.

Price
11.80 Licores Corredera

25.2.18 Lots Going on in Sherry Country

There is a lot happening in the Marco de Jerez at the moment, so naturally I have been spending quite a lot of time there. The XXII Festival de Jerez is in full flow with Flamenco everywhere providing an unforgettable atmosphere. I went to two great performances, at Tabanco Eguiluz where Alberto “El Almendro” was singing with a guitarist whose name I failed to catch (photo on the right), and Tabanco El Guitarrón where Paco “Gasolina Hijo” and Jesús de Rebeco sang and played respectively, while Tatiana Cohelo produced the finest zapateado (Flamenco tap dancing) I have ever seen. Added to the superb Flamenco, Guitarrón has an excellent list of Sherries by the glass.

In the wine business lots of interesting things have been happening. Ramiro Ibáñez’ stunning 2016 naturally sweet Pandorga is now available, and he and Guillermo Pérez, having bought the rights to the famous De La Riva brand will shortly launch an ancient Oloroso, an ancient Moscatel and a Fino. They will not be cheap, but having tasted them they are of impeccable, outstanding quality as you might expect. Viña Armijo has launched a new table wine, 12 Liños, a barrel aged Palomino from Miraflores, and Bodega Forlong has launched La Fleur, a Palomino aged in butts under flor. Bodegas Álvaro Domecq has come up with an innovative bottled cocktail called Waler 19 (named after a thoroughbred Arab horse and its strength) while the Mayetos Sanluqueños have a new (2017) and delicious vintage on the market.

The Blanco brothers of Viña Callejuela will soon launch three new vintage (2014) single Pago Manzanillas using the same musts as their classic single Pago table wines. The Oloroso and Fino from Lorente & Barba are now available as are some new releases from Las Botas. A Pedro Ximénez and an Amontillado are now on the market from Fernández Gao, and the girls from El Puerto, Cuatro Ojos have launched their Desvelao, dry Moscatel aged under flor and Molinero, a dry lees aged Moscatel. Meanwhile Bodegas Juan Piñero have re-vamped their standard Oloroso, Palo Cortado and Amontillado under a new label “Great Duke” with a 12 years age declaration.

The producers of most of the aforementioned wines were on hand, along with their wines, at the annual and excellent Cuatro Gatos Wine Club tasting in El Puerto de Santa María. Federico Ferrer is to be congratulated on another great tasting, as always featuring smaller but always great bodegas, not all from the Marco de Jerez.

Also of interest is the second release of a Rioja, “Monopole Clásico” from Bodegas CVNE. It contains some 20% Manzanilla La Gitana and is partly aged in Manzanilla butts, and is far better than the standard version. In fact it is the original (and legal) version, discontinued over 30 years ago.

24.2.18 Paola Medina in Decanter Top 10 Spanish Winemakers

The prestigious wine Magazine has chosen Williams & Humbert oenologist Paola Medina as the only representative of the Marco de Jerez in an article about the pioneers who are changing the face of Spanish wine by Pedro Ballesteros MW called “Ten Next Generation Spanish Winemakers to Know”. According to the article she “symbolises the so-called Sherry Revolution, which is uniting the energy of youth, and a profound respect their inheritance, with an extraordinary knowledge and creativity” and her work, particularly on vintage biologically aged wines, should be followed closely “to enjoy Sherry as you would never have imagined before”.

The article goes on to say that Paola is “well aware of the need to integrate Sherry with haute cuisine and to focus on quality wines and so she has explored all possibilities to create this wine of the future. For example she is looking at unfortified Sherry made with extra ripe grapes carefully cultivated in the vineyard, Oloroso made with first quality must, the recuperation of Pedro Ximénez and some of the disused grape varieties. But her most extraordinary innovation is the vintage Fino, made by substituting the traditional solera system for static ageing and bottling at the point where the flor is dying off.

Not only did Pedro Ballesteros, a master of wine, praise her work highly, but of the wines selected to represent the work of each of the ten oenologists, Paola’s amazing Fino Tiento 2007 received the highest score, an impressive 98 points.

Bodegas Paúl & Dastis

Not much is known for sure about the Paúl family. They may have been from Vizcaya or Navarra in northern Spain - or even Scotland - and they almost certainly established a bodega in 1795, or it could have been in the first third of the XIX century. In fact it may have been both. What is known is that they became very successful as almacenistas, supplying the likes of González Byass, and also as exporters.

Tracing the exact history of XIX century Sherry firms can be almost impossible as their names change frequently with the arrival or departure of a partner. It is a veritable labyrinth. It probably started with the Dastis family who were French merchants originating in Astis (Béarn), France. The first to arrive in Cádiz was Lorenzo Dastis y Perenge (b 1761) and he is documented as having bodegas in Jerez in 1794. His son Pedro Dastis Sologuren (b 1806) founded a successful bodega with his cousin Pedro Soles y Dastis (b 1801) called Dastis & Soles, no doubt using inherited stocks.

Inside one of the bodegas (foto: elpuertoysusbodegas)

One of Lorenzo’s grandsons, Germán Dastis y Ruiz de Loizaga (b 1833), his cousin Francisco Dastis y Sologuren and José Paúl y Parquín formed a Sherry company, Paúl & Dastis which had offices in London. The firm was almost certainly related to Dastis & Soles both in terms of family and business. Under the management of Manuel Francisco de Paúl y Picardo the business grew and the family became very wealthy. The trading name changed at least nine times: DF Paúl e Hijo, Viuda de DF Paúl, M Francisco Paúl, Carlos de Paúl, Dastis Hermanos, Dastis & Paúl,Luis Dastis, Isidoro Dastis, Francisco Dastis, Camacho Dastis….

(foto: gentedejerez)

Meanwhile a certain Agustín Blázquez y Blázquez (1826-1886) was doing very well exporting their wines from Cádiz. In 1857 Servanda de Paúl y Picardo (1837-1881), married Agustín, originally from Antequera (Málaga). The marriage certainly raised Agustín’s position on the social ladder, and he and his family lived in an enormous and luxurious house in Cádiz. He established his own bodega in Calle Paúl, almost certainly using family stocks, and expanded into the Calle Sevilla. The firm was taken over by Domecq in 1973 and the C/Sevilla bodegas were sold off to a construction firm. The only remnant still standing is a small bodega in the Callejon de los Bolos which has been preserved as a municipal cultural and exhibition space - but which is currently closed.

Bodega Callejon de los Bolos

Calle Paúl in Jerez was built on land gifted by José de Paúl in 1840 to the Ayuntamiento, who named the street after him. His own bodegas once formed a whole block between Calles Paúl, Sevilla and Santo Domingo, later belonging to Agustín Blázquez, and all now blocks of flats. The railway once ran down the street, on the other side of which were the bodegas of Williams & Humbert, the surviving buildings of which are now the Hotel Los Jandalos, behind what is now the Consejo Regulador building.

In 1971 the Paúl family sold their remaining XVIII century soleras, which had been stored for a long time at the Alcázar, to Don Faustino González Aparicio. He used them to found bodegas Faustino González, who released their first VORS Oloroso in 2017 from one of these soleras. A descendant of the Dastis family, Alfonso Dastis, is currently the Spanish foreign minister.