Palo Cortado Solera 20%, Cayetano del Pino

Appearance
Golden amber, legs.
Nose
Very pretty, gentle with a delicate honeyed sweetness and lots of toasted almonds and nut oil, hints of vanilla and very slightest trace of oak, subtle, delicate, refined and attractive.
Palate
Smooth and crisp, dry and round, very fresh with lots of nuts and a hint of walnut in syrup, generous with an attractive texture yet all the while quite delicate.
Comments

This lovely wine comes from a small bodega in the Plaza Silos next to Maestro Sierra in Jerez. Once bigger and more commercially oriented, they are now really just almacenistas, and their wines are contract bottled with minimal filtration by Sanchez Romate. This Solera Palo Cortado is around 15 years old and comes from a solera of 22 butts. This feeds their older 5 butt solera for the Palo Cortado Viejisimo.

Price
£ 15 from the Wine Society. UK agents Ehrmanns.

Oloroso Dulce Matusalem VORS 20.5%, Gonzalez Byass

Appearance
Very deeply coloured, almost black at the edges through burnt umber to old amber with a trace of green at the rim, slow legs.
Nose
Deep and quite intense, strong aromas of old butts in a bodega, perfectly balanced Oloroso and PX with lots of pasa, date, American oak, cinnamon and a trace of candied orange peel. There are also hints of freshly roasted coffee. Really complex and amazingly well integrated for a blend.
Palate
The concentration comes through first, old Oloroso, old butts and coffee, then the sweetness arrives but without going too far. There is so much flavour you hardly notice it, but it is full of pasa and date without ever obscuring the Oloroso, whose phenols neatly balance it. Beautifully textured and very long. Superb.
Comments
Matusalem is one of GB's Rare Old Solera Wines. It is a blend of 75% Oloroso and 25% PX from GB's own Macharnudo and Carrascal vineyards, aged separately for 15 years then blended and put into an 1847 solera where it spends the next 15 years. Sugar content is around 130 grams/litre. The wine is quietly called "Cream" on the back label in tiny lettering as the old term "Oloroso Dulce" has been prohibited since 2012. Producers of wines of this level of quality would prefer not to use the term "Cream" as it might be taken to imply a cheap sweet blend. Still, if Cream can be this good, they should be shouting about it! 93 Parker. It might interest you to know that the Scotch distillers Whyte & MacKay age some of their single Malt "The Dalmore" in Matusalem casks. Quite how these casks can be spared, I would love to know...
Price
Per half bottle, around £17.00. UK distributors Gonzalez Byass UK.

5.7.14 Gonzalez Byass Tintilla de Rota Wins Award

The Ultimate Wine Challenge, an American wine competition, has awarded the Chairman’s Trophy to this beautiful wine. An expert and professional jury awarded it 98 points as the best sweet wine.

Tintilla de Rota was all but extinct till in 2002 Gonzalez Byass planted a vineyard at their Finca Moncloa at Arcos de la Frontera near Jerez.

The bodega also won good points (91) for Tio Pepe and Viña AB, and for various other table wines.

Sunning Tintilla grapes (foto+Jerez)

Fino Coquinero 17%, Osborne

Appearance
Deepish bright golden straw, light legs.
Nose
Most attractive and fuller than many. There is a yeastiness with traces of straw and some briny salinity too, all very polished, then you notice traces of almond and hazelnut and a very slight hint of apparent sweetness balanced by the bitterness of the Flor. This is older Fino with a hint of finely controlled oxidation giving it a little more weight.
Palate
For a Fino it is full and quite serious, plenty of complexity from the still present bitter Flor mingling with the nuttier notes of the early Amontillado stage. This is lovely, and it has that roundness of the Puerto wines which balances with a hint of Flor at the end, which lingers for quite a while.
Comments
This is a lovely Sherry of a style not seen much now, a Fino-Amontillado. It ages for 4.5 years as a Fino and then it is fortified to 17%, killing off the flor, and ages oxidatively for 2 more years. It used to be sold as an Amontillado, but is now called a Fino, and I'm not sure if it is now younger than before. Anyway, it is well regarded by the trade. FYI - A "coquinero" is someone who collects cockleshells and is also a slang term for someone from El Puerto de Santa Maria.
Price
8-9 Euros in Spain. Hard to find in the UK, but winesearcher.com has someone selling it for £12.99.

4.7.14 Gonzalez Byass Unveil New Kind of Whisky

The whisky, called Nomad,  will be distilled, blended and aged in Oloroso butts in Scotland, then taken to Jerez to undergo a further year’s ageing in Noe PX butts. The blend consists of 25 malt whiskies and 3 grains aged for between 5 and 9 years and is created by Whyte & MacKay master blender Richard Paterson. Once it arrives in Jerez, it is looked after by GB chief oenologist Antonio Flores. The whisky is expected to retail for 30 Euros or £25 and sounds quite delicious.

(pic: Drinks International)

Bodegas: Cayetano del Pino & Cia.

This small bodega was established in 1886 by Don Cayetano del Pino y Vázquez (1835-1918 ) a native of La Carlota, Córdoba. By 1858, aged only 23 he was showing prowess as a salesman and worked for a brand called "Antón Pericón. In Sevilla, he became acquainted with important contacts such as Alberto Romero and soon after Manuel de La Calzada, son of a popular banker. With their help he was able to realise his dream of establishing a bodega. On the 19th November 1896 the company of Cayetano del Pino y Compañía was founded and registered at Calle del Rosario, 16, Jerez.

The bodega was located at Plaza Cocheras, 3 and only four years later the firm moved to the Calle de Armas de Santiago into much bigger, more comfortable and very picturesque premises opposite the Tempul gardens. There were three main bodegas in the complex: San Bernabé, San Vicente and Santísima Trinidad, the latter being the site of the bottling and despatch. There was also machinery, cooperage, printing and distilling with a workforce of over 150 people, including a sales force. The bodega even had TWO telephones! In only a few years Cayetano had turned a dream into a modern bodega company up there with the Sherry barons. By 1900 he had nearly 600 labels.

The bodegas in Armas de Santiago

In 1904 King Alfonso XIII visited the bodega which was an official supplier to the Royal Household.{He also took tea - yes, really! - at Domecq as well as visiting Gonzalez Byass}. In 1905 Cayetano's friend and fellow bodeguero Carlos Mauricio Morales Sevil proposed him for the Civil Order of Alfonso XII in recognition of his invention of the natural ageing of wines. (? I wish I knew!) The bodega was also winning medals for quality. It was also selling some brands from the defunct Bodega Cramp Suter & Co. under licence.

Cayetano del Pino Balbotin (Foto Jerez Siempre)

In the 1890s Cayetano married Bernabea Balbontín, born in Sevilla in 1869. They had two sons, and Cayetano del Pino Balbontin (1896-1935) ran the business successfully from the early XX century until his untimely death, when his brother Enrique, a noted footballer who played for Xerez Deportivo, took over. At this stage the bodega was still prominent with a considerable workforce. When Enrique died, his sisters ran the business with the help of an accountant, Jose Luis Sisto, and then in 1962, Cayetano’s children, Maria Jesus, Cayetano, Angel and Enrique del Pino Bohorquez took over.

By the end of the 1970s, the Sherry business in general had begun to contract along with wine consumption and many vineyards were grubbed up. That, along with management difficulties slowly converted this important firm into a much smaller almacenista, and it even closed for 12 years, but selling no wine for this period allowed it to age and it improved greatly which worked out well for the family. While the bodega is Registered at the Consejo Regulador as a bodega de Crianza y Expedicion, they operate principally as almacenistas, now from a smaller bodega at Plaza de Silos, 3, bought from Domecq in 1983. They also constructed a warehouse on the Carretera de Arcos. The firm remains in family hands: Cayetano del Pino Bohorquez is president, Gerardo del Pino Iñíguez is the manager assisted by his cousin José Enrique Otte del Pino who is the oenologist, and his brother Miguel Ángel as a director. Federico Merino looks after the accounts.

Racking around the turn of the century (Foto Jerez Siempre)

Some of their many older brands were:

Monja Quina, Ponche Pino, Coñac Pino, Manzanillas El Espartero and El Litri, Oloroso San Enrique, Amontillado Pasado Adela, Amontillado Fino Ladies, Amontillado Viva Sevilla!, Pedro Ximenez Extra Superior, Lagartijillo Palma Fina, and their special sparkling vermouth Santa Elena, all with beautiful colourful labels depicting either beautiful women or bullfighting scenes. They even offered a Port.

The bodega as it looks today in Plaza de Silos

Some of their wine is available through Emilio Lustau’s Almacenista range, indeed Lustau buy some of their Amontillado to refresh their Botaina. The other wines are bottled for them by Sanchez Romate. Unusually, they do not sell Fino or Oloroso.

Palo cortado 1/15 (@15 yo) and a Palo Cortado Viejisimo 1/5 (over 35 yo and an exclusivity of the Wine Society), Palo Cortado 1/10 at over 30 years old, Palo Cortado Solera Cayetano del Pino at over 20 years and Amontillado Solera aged for over 20 years.

Visits? By previous appointment

Address: Plaza de Silos,3 11404 Jerez de la Frontera (Cadiz)

Telephone: 956 345 736

Website: http://bodegascayetanodelpino.com/

1.7.14 Feria del Brandy de Jerez

The I Feria del Brandy de Jerez starts tomorrow and runs till the 6^th. There will be stands at the Alameda Vieja beside the Alcazar showing Brandy, cocktails and food matching. There will be tastings, music, barman demonstrations and even ice sculptures too.