Wine of the Week
Valdespino Manzanilla La Especial En Rama 2015
D.O. Manzanilla-Sanlúcar de Barrameda
Variety - 100% Palomino Fino
ABV - 16%
€24,90 from Bodeboca
It’s Sherry Week 2023 and an opportunity to drink something rather rare and unique. It’s a Manzanilla, Jim, but not as we know it.
I bought a bottle of the Valdespino Manzanilla La Especial En Rama 2015 last year when it was released.
What makes this Manzanilla different, and why is it named La Especial? I’ll come to that shortly.
Valdespino is one of my favourite sherry producers. For quality, you really can’t go wrong with any of the wines in their range. They are well-known for the terroir-driven character of their wines that are made with grapes from their own vineyards.
For La Especial the Palomino grapes come from Pago de Miraflores, a legendary coastal Cru facing the mouth of the Guadalquivir River and the Atlantic Ocean. The Albariza soil in Miraflores has a top layer of soil called Lustrillo, which adds notes of ash and smoke to the base wines used for Manzanillas. Underneath this sits a more porous and fragile type of Albariza called Tosca which adds subtlety and salinity.
This Pago also provides the grapes for the Manzanilla Deliciosa En Rama.
The La Especial 2015 is unique because it is a Manzanilla ‘de añada’, a vintage sherry.
Guillermo Arce at Valdespino explained to me what that means:
“A Manzanilla ‘de añada’ is permitted under the rules of Sherry Consejo Regulador. This means it is aged under a static ageing process (crianza estática), not the usual system of solera and criaderas.
“We used old Manzanilla casks, the same ones used for biological ageing: we need the ‘contamination’ in these casks so the new wine develops the flor properly.
“In the case of this wine, certain casks, exclusively containing Manzanilla from 2015 vintage, were sealed in the presence of Consejo Regulador officials and were opened in October 2021 for tasting. The selected batch was bottled en rama in April 2022.”
The result is a concentrated but wonderfully elegant wine. The nose is very expressive showing touches of apple, honey and roasted almonds. The flor influence is definitely there.
The palate is fresh and savoury, with pronounced salinity. It is complex, round and warm, with fresh acidity and a long finish.
Valdespino have chosen a stylish, green glass Rhine bottle with a driven cork to showcase its potential as a wine to pair with food.
It’s around €25 a bottle, but this is a very fine, exceptional wine with just 2,800 bottles filled.