Albero En Rama Manzanilla 2022 Blend

Three years ago we first tasted a remarkable en rama (unfiltered) Manzanilla blended from the 275 year old solera Barbiana. That wine blew us away, such a departure from the water clear, racy, and saline manzanillas we were accustomed to (not there's anything wrong with them) but deeper, more resonant aromatics and flavours than anything we'd tasted before and certainly reset and understanding of what was possible from the genre in it's purest form. Incredible wine. 

That was the first bottling and, to our amazement, the wine was enthusiastically embraced by our customers, complete with follow-up emails and texts to tell us how much they loved the wine. There was another blend last year which went the same way and now, the third blending has just arrived. It is another cracker wine; same, same but different to its predecessors but no less impressive. 

Before getting onto that specific wine, a wee recap about how this wine came about. 

It all started after a serendipitous glass of Barbiana en Rama (non-filtered) in a local San Luca de Barrameda bar. Melbourne-based Spanish wine importer, Scott Wasley was the drinker and he was struck by the quality of the wine. In his words:

It was gorgeous: Open, round and free, smelling of the sea, feeling the Andalucian sky, lightly wheaty, chalk-crunched, sparkling with salt, pricked with cabezuelas (spent flor yeast) bitters on the finish.

The Barbiana solera - a solera which runs back 275 years and which was purchased by the Delgado Zuleta in 1978 and kept separately ever since. As it happens, Wasley imports their excellent manzanilla La Goya. No doubt you've seen it any decent wine bar. At this point phone calls are exchanged and within a day or so he's given access to this vinous treasure to create his own blend. Very persuasive man is our Scotty. 

The other thing he possesses besides a power of persuasion is an excellent palate, especially for all things Palomino. He knows which rein to pull to extract all the disparate expressions of the grape and then weave them together into a cohesive and ultimately delicious manzanilla. 

By the end of that original tasting he'd found an array of difference expressions from each successive Bota (barrel); all compelling and all bringing something different and ultimately creating a blend that would become Albero. 

The new and third in the series of blends (this wine) is another cracker. This one was blended over a few weeks. The first iteration was almost there but Scott decided to sit on the wine and re-taste over days, all the while consulting his notes from each Bota and sending new blending instructions for new samples to be tasted throughout the duration of his usual sourcing trip. 

It has a more pronounced orange rind element than previous iterations but then there are similarities like chamomile from the fresh flor, the bitter twang of the spent yeast flor also known as cabezuelas , chalk, earth, nori and iodine that speak of the sea and orange and mandarin blossom.

More than anything though, for me it's the texture and richness of this blend I find most different. Deeply resonating flavours of earth and kelp are cradled in a rich enveloping texture. I have to say, it's a Manzanilla I associate with autumn and winter rather than the zip and flight of the La Goya. It even conjours colours of autumn - burnt oranges and fading yellows. 

I drank it again last night and was again struck by its power and its layers of complexity. It's ultimately what we wish all wines were, evocative and moving. As I wrote a couple of years ago, the wine is, much like the original, deeply impressive and for me even a touch moving.

The stunning labels were produced by Scott's artist-partner, Leah and draw on the colours of the bodega walls, the landscape and indeed the colours they find in the wine, for inspiration. 

There's never much of this blend so please get in quick if you wish to grab some. Drink it with some anchovy stuffed olives and smile.

Cheers

Michael