Join us this Saturday for an exciting tasting of the wines of Spain showcasing wave making producers & remarkable sites.
Saturday 29th March
2.00pm-5.00pm
Open on the day:
2.00pm-5.00pm
Open on the day:
'19 Recaredo Corpinnat 'Terrers' Brut Nature - Catalunya $105
'22 Bodegas Cinco Léguas 'La Maldición' - Madrid malvar $42
$'22 Algueira Ribeira Sacra 'Brandán' - Galicia godello $66
'20 Suertes del Marqués Valle de la Orotava 'La Solana' - Canary Islands listán negro $66
'18 Valenciso Rioja Reserva - Rioja tempranillo $85
'21 Toro Albalá 'Don PX' - Andalucia pedro ximenez $58
Enjoy 10% discount when you purchase any three bottles on the day.
Hosted by Fabiola Valtolina of Bibendum, and free of charge.
Recaredo
Recaredo rightly holds a formidable reputation as Spain’s greatest producer of sparkling wines. The domaine’s origins date back to 1924 when Josep Mata Capellades, a professional disgorger, decided to build a cellar under his house and cultivate his own vineyard in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, a village in the heart of Catalonia’s Alt Penedés region. He called his new winery Recaredo after his father, Recaredo Mata Figueres.
From humble beginnings, Mata grew his holdings while forging his distinctive style, pioneering the production of brut nature sparkling wines, using oak barrels and crafting long-aged sparkling wines with the Xarel·lo grape variety. Mata’s sons continued in their father’s footsteps, and today, it is his grandson, Ton Mata, who heads up the winery.
Under Ton’s direction, Recaredo has become a worldwide reference point for sparkling wine. Recaredo is a pioneer on many levels; not only was it the first producer in the Penedès region to be certified biodynamic (in 2010), but it uses exclusively estate-grown fruit, and all the grapes are picked by hand and vinified in its own cellars in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia.
Mata’s philosophy has long been about crafting wines of place rather than conforming to a particular style. For this reason, Recaredo left the sprawling Cava D.O. in 2018 to join Corpinnat, an organisation then comprising nine leading wineries in Alt Penedés. Inspired by Champagne’s Récoltant-Manipulant model, Corpinnat was established to distinguish the great sparkling wines made in the heart of Penedès, a region whose traditional-method sparkling wine history dates back to the end of the 19th century.
Corpinnat’s manifesto includes arguably the strictest guidelines overseeing any sparkling wine production in the world. This includes working with 100% organic grapes, harvesting by hand, minimum ageing requirements and vinification at the estate. Today, only 12 producers have met such rigorous obligations. Corpinnat is not an easy club to get into.
Recaredo’s vineyards are amongst the most immaculate and precisely tended we have visited. All the plots, of which there are many, lie within 25km of the cellars in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia in the Corpinnat territory—an area of mainly calcareous soils and hilly Mediterranean landscapes dominated by the Montserrat Mountains. The vineyards are dry-farmed and planted only with the region’s local varieties, notably Xarel·lo, which accounts for 60% of Recaredo’s production. Draught horses plough the top vineyards, and only organic fertilisers are applied when necessary.
Recaredo only makes vintage-dated wines. Yields are some of the lowest you will find in the world of sparkling wine: 40 hl/ha would not be a wild estimate over the past decade. Fermentation is triggered by vineyard yeasts originally isolated in 1999, and Mata still uses a large proportion of large oak barrels for fermentation—more so in the single-vineyard and long-aged labels. Unusually for the region, secondary fermentations occur without adding cane sugar. Instead, the secondary fermentation uses grape juice from the following vintage. Aging takes place under natural cork only, a homage to the family’s tradition and the terroir-driven house style.
All the wines spend at least 30 months on lees and up to 15 years or more in their cellars for the top cuvée. Then, all the riddling is done in-house, and the disgorgements―which take place without freezing―are done manually by a group of artisans who expel the lees. All this is to say, Recaredo’s practice in vineyard and cellar would not look out of place next to a very top grower Champagne outfit. As The Wine Advocate’s Luis Gutiérrez has written: “I’m not sure if there is any other sparkling wine producer in the world who works with such strict standards.”
Under Recaredo’s management, Xarel·lo has emerged as a faithful communicator of terroir and a variety that ages and improves in bottle like few others. This Catalan variety started as a red grape before mutating into a white variety. Perhaps for this reason, Xarel·lo is high in antioxidant and phenolic compounds—more than some red varieties—promoting its astonishing ageing potential while lending an attractive salty-bitter sensation to the wine’s finish.
Like all the world’s greatest fizz, these are, first and foremost, fine wines. “These are more than just sparkling wines—they are long-aged white wines,” says Ton Mata. “The bubbles must allow you to see the wine; they must not hide the wine.” When tasting in the context of a meal, these wines take on another level of complexity, evolving with air and taking you on a journey. It’s not very often you come by a sparkling wine producer where the quality and character of the wines match the greatest growers in Champagne. Yet that is precisely what you get with Recaredo.
Recaredo Corpinnat Terrers Brut Nature 2019 (Disg. June 2023)
Biodynamic. 57% Xarel·lo, 25% Macabeu, 17% Parellada, 1% Monastrell. Aged for 39 months on lees, Terrers is made from fruit grown in Recaredo’s own vineyards, all rooted in the calcareous soils of the Alt Penedès region. Each year, the blend can include fruit from as many as 65 small parcels drawn from Recaredo’s vines in Serral del Roure, Serral del Vell, Pedra Blanca, Marçaneta and the elevated Montpedrós vineyard at 455 metres. The base wines for Terrers are raised in tank, giving a super bright and fluid wine with textured stone fruit and bursts of citrus alongside an elegant palate marked by notes of herb and spice and creamy, textured lees-aging notes.
Algueira
If anyone has earned the right to call their wine hand-crafted, the new pioneers of Ribeira Sacra (which acquired DO status in just 1996) must be at the head of the queue. However, even before the creation of this idyllic and isolated Galician DO, Algueira’s Fernando González and Ana Perez had begun purchasing and restoring vineyards abandoned here by the end of the 19th century. Phylloxera, followed by recession and civil war had brought rack and ruin to these once-proud, ancient vineyards. Thanks to growers like Algueira, new energy has bloomed in Ribeira Sacra.
The first step to crafting wines of genuine authenticity was to rebuild the terraces, or solcacos, that were carved by the Romans into the rocky valleys banking the Sil, Miño and Bibei Rivers. Not only have the founding Algueira team painstakingly resurrected these abandonados, but they have also demonstrated their land and practice as capable of producing wines that bear comparison with the very best of Europe. From humble beginnings, González and Pérez now tend 20 hectares of vines. Today they are joined by son Fabio González Riveiro and young winemaker David Pascual.
The vineyards are based in Ribera Sacra’s prestigious Amandi subzone, where vertiginous slopes of slate and schist rise like staircases from the river Sil. In places, these terraces are so dizzyingly steep that they make the hillsides of Côte-Rôtie look like nursery slopes. Algueira’s white varieties shine in the cooler Ribeira del Sil sub-region on soils of gneiss and quartz. Due to the extreme nature of the sites, cultivation is painstakingly slow. Now largely biodynamic, these practices sometimes mean the numbers don’t add up, however, González believes the wines deserve every effort.
Mencía is Algueira’s paragon variety, producing aromatic wines of silky balance, clarity, and mineral resonance. González was also an early champion of Ribeira Sacra’s native grapes, and to this day makes Spain’s most exciting Merenzao, a variety with close links to Jura’s Trousseau. Algueira’s more sheltered, gneiss and quartz-laden slopes are devoted to Godello, Albariño and Treixadura, which yield some of Galicia’s most limpid, crystalline whites. Whatever the variety, every sip taken from these wines has the potential to profoundly change many drinkers’ perceptions of Spanish wine.
Algueira Ribeira Sacra Brandán 2022
This crystalline, fleshy Godello comes from a terraced vineyard that has been painstakingly restored by Algueira's Fernando González. This vineyard lies on the cooler, north facing Orense bank of the Sil River, the opposite side to most of Algueira's holdings. Here the 30- to 80-year-old vines are rooted in the losa (schist) soils of the Amandi gorge. The name of the wine pays tribute to the Celtic ancestry of the region, by the way (Brandán was a Celtic warlord who originally settled the area). Fermented with natural yeasts only and aged entirely without oak, it's a layered, fleshy Godello with vibrant citrus, white peach fruit and a round, juicy personality. It's a quality born of a special place, precise, low-yield viticulture and traditional, low-input winemaking.
Bodegas Cinco Léguas
“My goal is to produce grower wines,” explains Isart. “Wines that are more savoury than sweet. Wines that are hard to stop drinking.”
Based in the medieval town of Chinchón, Marc Isart is doing great things with Malvar and Tinto Fino (Tempranillo) in the rocky highlands southeast of Madrid. Having completed his mission with Bernabeleva, Marc is now wholly focused on his family project, which he has renamed Bodegas Cinco Léguas (previously La Maldición). The new name refers to a 16th-century law that allowed any wine produced within a radius of ‘five leagues’ from the capital to be served at the court of Madrid.
Marc and wife Carmen work with 12 parcels of old-vine Malvar and Tinto Fino—specifically the Tinto de Madrid clone—spread across three villages in the Arganda subzone of the Vinos de Madrid D.O.: Chinchón, Belmonte de Tajo and Colmenar de Oreja. All the vineyards lie at 700-800 metres above sea level, benefiting from the large diurnal shifts common to the area. As you travel west from the subzone of San Martín de Valdeiglesias, granitic soils give way to clay and limestone, with a number of the Isart vineyards stained red by the high ironstone content.
Marc and wife Carmen work with 12 parcels of old-vine Malvar and Tinto Fino—specifically the Tinto de Madrid clone—spread across three villages in the Arganda subzone of the Vinos de Madrid D.O.: Chinchón, Belmonte de Tajo and Colmenar de Oreja. All the vineyards lie at 700-800 metres above sea level, benefiting from the large diurnal shifts common to the area. As you travel west from the subzone of San Martín de Valdeiglesias, granitic soils give way to clay and limestone, with a number of the Isart vineyards stained red by the high ironstone content.
As you can imagine, the wines are different from those Isart crafted at Bernabeleva. Yet applied here, Isart’s precise organic viticulture, pick-on-freshness approach and artisanal winemaking techniques result in wines that are as juicy and fresh as they are delicious.
The vines are organically or biodynamically raised and the grapes harvested by hand. The Malvar whites are drawn from varied sites and are crafted in a range of vessels, including concrete, amphora and neutral oak. Malvar (aka Lairén, and not to be confused with the ubiquitous Airén grape) is a variety that tends to give wines with good acidity and aromas of citrus and bitter almonds. Isart's interpretations each offer a variation on a theme of mouthcoating texture fused with deep citrus and mineral vibrancy. All the whites see a measure of skin contact, reflecting the traditional techniques used by Spanish farmers in this part of Spain.
In a region where many reds are made for impact, the wines of Cinco Léguas offer a refreshing distraction. His Tinto Fino is a wine bar-friendly blend of 80% mature-vine Tempranillo complemented by local white grape Malvar, which brings lip-smacking freshness. Isart’s Rompecepas is an old-vine varietal Tinto Fino: entirely destemmed and aged in used 500-litre oak barrels, it is a deeper and more mouth-filling expression of the high-country vineyards east of Madrid.
The vines are organically or biodynamically raised and the grapes harvested by hand. The Malvar whites are drawn from varied sites and are crafted in a range of vessels, including concrete, amphora and neutral oak. Malvar (aka Lairén, and not to be confused with the ubiquitous Airén grape) is a variety that tends to give wines with good acidity and aromas of citrus and bitter almonds. Isart's interpretations each offer a variation on a theme of mouthcoating texture fused with deep citrus and mineral vibrancy. All the whites see a measure of skin contact, reflecting the traditional techniques used by Spanish farmers in this part of Spain.
In a region where many reds are made for impact, the wines of Cinco Léguas offer a refreshing distraction. His Tinto Fino is a wine bar-friendly blend of 80% mature-vine Tempranillo complemented by local white grape Malvar, which brings lip-smacking freshness. Isart’s Rompecepas is an old-vine varietal Tinto Fino: entirely destemmed and aged in used 500-litre oak barrels, it is a deeper and more mouth-filling expression of the high-country vineyards east of Madrid.
Bodegas Cinco Léguas Madrid La Maldición Malvar 2022
Organic. First produced in 2013, this idiosyncratic, pulpy, saline white is made from Spain's indigenous Malvar grape. This variety tends to give wines with good acidity and aromas of citrus and bitter almonds. The fruit is drawn from a tiny 0.44-hectare plot of old bush vines rooted in the chalky clay soils of Valdilecha in the Madrid mountains, some 730 metres above sea level. Organic/biodynamic cultivation, meagre yields and old-school (very old-school!) fermentation with skins and stalks for 50 days are the keys to this delicious, fascinating and very fairly priced white. Aging that included crushed skins and stalks was the traditional way Spanish farmers made their wines, and this just works with Malvar. Following pressing, the wine matured in old 300-litre casks. It’s a wine loaded with charisma and mouthcoating texture fused with deep citrus and mineral vibrancy. It also gives a glimpse into the deep history of this part of Spain.
Suertes del Marqués
Sandwiched between the Spanish territory’s highest peak—the snow-capped Mount Teide—and the Atlantic Ocean, the setting of the Suertes del Marqués vineyards is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular you will encounter. No less striking are the vineyards themselves: steep volcanic slopes blanketed by the ancient, indigenous varieties of the Canary Islands. The vines are managed using Tenerife’s unique, braided trellising system, el cordón trenzado, where multiple canes are literally plaited together to form long, twisted tentacles that can extend over 10 metres from the main trunk. The remarkable setting, the indigenous varieties and the surreal trellising method are a pointed reminder that you have arrived somewhere wholly unique. Any culture shock is, however, quickly dispelled by the remarkable quality of the wines.
García’s family had been winegrowers for decades before Jonatan took the leap to grow, bottle and market the wines under their own label in 2006. Covering 11 hectares of vineyards—fragmented into 20-plus plots at altitudes ranging from 350 to 700 metres—García’s vines are located on the volcanic slopes of Spain’s highest mountain in the cool, northern D.O. of Valle de la Orotava. García has a fondness for the great wines of Northern Europe and over the years the vineyard has been arranged according to Burgundy’s pyramid model, so alongside the villages blends from multiple parcels, there is an exciting range of single-vineyard vino de parcela wines. The growing and winemaking practices too, are hardly distinguishable from those employed by the sincerest growers worldwide: low-input organic viticulture (zero herbicides or other systemic treatments), cultivation by hand, the use of native yeasts and no fining or filtration.
All Suertes vines are pie franco (ungrafted), and many are over 100 years old; phylloxera never conquered the Canaries. And, while most of the answers lie in soil, the low yields from these ancient vines also account for the intensity and depth of terroir character in the wines. The aspect and low pH guarantee freshness and Atlantic vibrance (the north of Tenerife is very green in strong contrast to the hot, dry south of the island and highly influenced by the northern Alisio winds) and this region’s fresh climate can be tasted in the invigorating structure of its wines.
Over recent years, García has invested heavily in the vineyards, while the new cellar can handle as many as 50 ferments, allowing the winemakers greater flexibility. There has been a shift to less extraction and large-format oak, bestowing ever-greater soil-to-glass purity across the portfolio. For those who have not tasted a Suertes del Marqués wine, the combination of little-known grapes, ungrafted vineyards and dramatic volcanic soils make for some of the most distinctive and delicious wines we ship. The whites are textural and mouth-filling; they ripple with energetic tangy fruit and salty freshness, touched by smoke and stone. The reds are characteristically lithe and lucid, with aromas and flavours of wildflowers, spicy fruit and garrigue and a distinctive peppery minerality from the volcanic soils. Whichever wine you go for, we can guarantee these bottles will intrigue—and hopefully delight—all who try them.
Suertes del Marqués Tenerife Valle de la Orotava La Solana 2020
Vino de parcela. La Solana is mainly planted to old vine Listán Negro managed in the traditional cordon multiple or trenzado systems. Just 1.5 hectares, the vineyard faces east, towering over the Atlantic between 350 and 450 meters above sea level. The soils here, a layer of clay over volcanic rock, produce probably the most textural and fruit-forward of Suertes’ single-vineyard wines, the distinctive mineral impact from the 80 to 150-year-old vines and the pure volcanic soils always present and correct.The fruit is vatted into small, open concrete tanks for a cold soak before natural fermentation is made in seasoned French oak puncheons. Like all the wines here, La Solana is bottled without filtration. It is worth noting that this bottling is indicative of the purer, more mineral style that now emanates from the Suertes’ cellar.
Vino de parcela. La Solana is mainly planted to old vine Listán Negro managed in the traditional cordon multiple or trenzado systems. Just 1.5 hectares, the vineyard faces east, towering over the Atlantic between 350 and 450 meters above sea level. The soils here, a layer of clay over volcanic rock, produce probably the most textural and fruit-forward of Suertes’ single-vineyard wines, the distinctive mineral impact from the 80 to 150-year-old vines and the pure volcanic soils always present and correct.The fruit is vatted into small, open concrete tanks for a cold soak before natural fermentation is made in seasoned French oak puncheons. Like all the wines here, La Solana is bottled without filtration. It is worth noting that this bottling is indicative of the purer, more mineral style that now emanates from the Suertes’ cellar.
Valenciso
From humble beginnings, Valenciso has risen to become a leading light among Rioja’s small yet growing band of terroir-focused producers. The story began in the late 1990s when wine industry veterans Luis Valentín (Valen…) and Carmen Enciso (…ciso) left behind outstanding careers at Bodegas Palacio and rented a small warehouse with barely enough space to produce their first vintage of 2,000 cases.
Today, the vineyards and cellar are in the far north of Rioja Alta, in Ollauri, a small village four kilometres from Haro. Believing most of the region’s most outstanding wines derive from commune-specific precincts, Valentin and Enciso chose to focus on Ollauri and its immediate environs. Part of what has been proposed as the Western Sonsierra zone (by Alberto Gil and Antonio Remesal Villar in their compelling book, “Rioja: Vinos Silenciosos”), Ollauri’s vineyards are noted for their excellent calcário soils, altitudes of up to 600 meters and Atlantic-influenced climate. These factors are responsible for imparting depth and finesse into the Rioja Alta’s northern Tempranillo wines.
Along with their 30 plots, the Domaine also farms vines in nearby villages of Briones, Rodezno, Gimileo, Zarratón and Villalba, all of which lie within five kilometres of Ollauri. Vine age plays a key role—the average age sits around 30 years, rising to 60 years for the Reserva and up to 100 years for the Rioja Blanco. While Valenciso has been working with organics since its inception—a significant challenge considering less than 3% of the vineyards of Rioja are organically managed—certification is currently in process. Several biodynamic practices are also subscribed to, including preparations of chamomile and horsetail to help invigorate the soils.
As Valenciso continues to etch out its own distinctive space in the Rioja story, year in, year out, every wine from this producer points to constant progression. A distinctive feature of Luis and Carmen’s approach is the use of concrete tanks for fermentation, which allows for a gentler extraction of fruit and colour. Aging for the Reserva takes place in French oak barriques (only one-third replaced each year), and the white wine is raised in low-toast Caucasian oak to prevent undue influence on the wine. All the Valenciso wines ferment naturally and are bottled unfiltered. In sum, these are complex, savoury, terroir-driven Rioja wines, revealing Luis and Carmen’s preference for subtlety, elegance and refinement.
Valenciso Rioja Reserva 2018
This estate's flagship perfectly encapsulates Luis Gutiérrez’s assertion that Valenciso is one of the most traditional of Rioja’s modern producers. From a selection of handpicked Tempranillo from the clay/limestone soils around Ollauri, the grapes are drawn from 17 organically managed plots spread across the villages of Villalba, Gimileo, Rodezno, Briones and Haro, all within a five-kilometre radius of the winery.Part of what has been proposed as the Western Sonsierra zone (by Alberto Gil and Antonio Remesal Villar in Rioja: Vinos Silenciosos), these venerable sites lie at the heart of Rioja’s grower-producer genesis in the late 19th century. Key to the quality includes the patrimony of old-vine Tempranillo (no less than 60 years old in this cuvée), excellent limestone calcário soils and altitudes of up to 600 metres. In the right hands, these historic terroirs imbue their wines with aromatic intensity and great structure for longevity. The wine ferments naturally in concrete vats before aging for 18 months in (mostly) low-toast Radoux French oak barriques. In recent vintages, 10% of the wine has also been raised in low-toast Caucasus oak, further lessening the wine’s already minimal wood influence. Following aging in barrel, the wine is transferred back to cool concrete vats to settle for a further 24 months before release. Luis and Carmen find the wine clarifies so well in concrete that there is no need to fine or filter it before bottling. “We seek wines with aromatic volume, wines that shine not out of weight but of perfume,” explains Luis Valentín. Valenciso’s classy, beautifully poised 2018 Reserva does just that.
This estate's flagship perfectly encapsulates Luis Gutiérrez’s assertion that Valenciso is one of the most traditional of Rioja’s modern producers. From a selection of handpicked Tempranillo from the clay/limestone soils around Ollauri, the grapes are drawn from 17 organically managed plots spread across the villages of Villalba, Gimileo, Rodezno, Briones and Haro, all within a five-kilometre radius of the winery.Part of what has been proposed as the Western Sonsierra zone (by Alberto Gil and Antonio Remesal Villar in Rioja: Vinos Silenciosos), these venerable sites lie at the heart of Rioja’s grower-producer genesis in the late 19th century. Key to the quality includes the patrimony of old-vine Tempranillo (no less than 60 years old in this cuvée), excellent limestone calcário soils and altitudes of up to 600 metres. In the right hands, these historic terroirs imbue their wines with aromatic intensity and great structure for longevity. The wine ferments naturally in concrete vats before aging for 18 months in (mostly) low-toast Radoux French oak barriques. In recent vintages, 10% of the wine has also been raised in low-toast Caucasus oak, further lessening the wine’s already minimal wood influence. Following aging in barrel, the wine is transferred back to cool concrete vats to settle for a further 24 months before release. Luis and Carmen find the wine clarifies so well in concrete that there is no need to fine or filter it before bottling. “We seek wines with aromatic volume, wines that shine not out of weight but of perfume,” explains Luis Valentín. Valenciso’s classy, beautifully poised 2018 Reserva does just that.
Toro Albalá
Toro Albalá should need little introduction as the most significant producer of Pedro Ximénez in the world today. Under the (some would say eccentric) guidance of Antonio Sánchez Romero, in 1970, Toro Albalá was the first Montilla producer to commercialise bottled, dessert-styled Pedro Ximénez. We believe the Bodega also remains the world’s only specialist in 100% vintage Pedro Ximénez. Toro Albalá works with the finest vineyard holdings in Montilla and today houses the oldest and most legendary stocks in the region.
Founded in 1844, Toro Albalá is based in Aguilar de la Frontera, right in the bullseye of DO Montilla-Moriles, the hilly Andalucían hinterland that forms ‘P.X. country’. The DO surrounds the two towns of Montilla in the north and Moriles in the south, both in the Province of Cordoba. In 1922 José Maria Toro Albalá purchased the Estate and made his mark by moving the whole Bodega into a former electrical plant. It was here that José Maria began to write the blueprint for the modern incarnation of Toro Albalá.
Toro Albalá’s old, bush-vine Pedro Ximénez is planted on the bleach-white, chalky albariza soils of the region. This soil type is not unique to Montilla-Moriles—Sherry’s other capitals of Sanlúcar de Barrameda and Jerez de la Frontera share the spoils. However, the combination of these light soils with altitude and the hot, dry climate—one that can sufficiently ripen Pedro Ximénez—set Montilla apart from its maritime-influenced sister regions.
This producer’s reputation lies in the balance of extraordinary sun-ripened richness and depth of old vine P.X., combined with a bright, savoury quality, which never allows the wines to veer into the cloying end of the spectrum. This is managed through strict quality control, from the old vines and great soils, all the way through their very long aging process.
The Bodega’s mindboggling vintage wines are black as pitch, indescribably complex and represent the most profound expressions of P.X. from Andalucía. But Toro Albalá’s offering isn’t limited to their P.X. nectar. Back in the 19th century, when Toro Albalá’s forefather Antonio Sánchez Prieto first started to produce and age wines in the village of La Noria, his emphasis was mainly on Fino wines. This is a tradition kept bang up to date by Toro Albalá’s famous unfortified savoury wines—the Fino en Rama Eléctrico and a stunning thirty-year-old Amontillado.
Toro Albalá Don PX 2021 (375ml)
The Don PX wines come from the youngest sweet vintage wines of Toro Albalá. The carefully selected Pedro Ximénez grapes were hand-harvested and left to dehydrate under the sun on straw mats for about seven days. The grapes were then pressed, and when the perfect balance between sugar, alcohol and acidity was reached in the tank, the yeast was stunned with Aguardiente (clear local brandy) to stop the fermentation. The fortified wine was decanted into stainless steel and large cone-shaped amphorae known locally as tinajas. The wine must be naturally settled to avoid filtering because of its richness, so it’s bottled straight from these holding vessels.As these early-release wines are neither barrel-aged nor blended, they are wonderfully pure, grapey examples of Pedro that capture all the variety’s delicious raisin and honey hedonism and racy acidity before rancio sets in. The amber nectar glows with concentrated fig, honey and muscatel raisin notes and finishes warm, lingering and sweet. Despite this natural sugar level, it remains remarkably bright and fresh.Pedro Ximénez’s affinity with chocolate-based desserts is well known. Perhaps less well-known is how well the wines pair with salty blue cheeses. This is particularly the case with Toro Albalá’s younger vintage wines. This also goes well with fig-based desserts and sweet pastries. It can be kept open in the fridge forever, by the way, making it perfect for pouring by the glass or keeping. The Don PX has also become popular as a cocktail mixer due to its depth of flavour and superb price point.
The Don PX wines come from the youngest sweet vintage wines of Toro Albalá. The carefully selected Pedro Ximénez grapes were hand-harvested and left to dehydrate under the sun on straw mats for about seven days. The grapes were then pressed, and when the perfect balance between sugar, alcohol and acidity was reached in the tank, the yeast was stunned with Aguardiente (clear local brandy) to stop the fermentation. The fortified wine was decanted into stainless steel and large cone-shaped amphorae known locally as tinajas. The wine must be naturally settled to avoid filtering because of its richness, so it’s bottled straight from these holding vessels.As these early-release wines are neither barrel-aged nor blended, they are wonderfully pure, grapey examples of Pedro that capture all the variety’s delicious raisin and honey hedonism and racy acidity before rancio sets in. The amber nectar glows with concentrated fig, honey and muscatel raisin notes and finishes warm, lingering and sweet. Despite this natural sugar level, it remains remarkably bright and fresh.Pedro Ximénez’s affinity with chocolate-based desserts is well known. Perhaps less well-known is how well the wines pair with salty blue cheeses. This is particularly the case with Toro Albalá’s younger vintage wines. This also goes well with fig-based desserts and sweet pastries. It can be kept open in the fridge forever, by the way, making it perfect for pouring by the glass or keeping. The Don PX has also become popular as a cocktail mixer due to its depth of flavour and superb price point.
