Tuesday 24 December 2013

Old Harvest Medium Dry PX 17%, Ximenez Spinola

Appearance
Light amber/old gold through gold to a trace of green at the rim, legs.
Nose
Aromatic, different, charming. A honeyed sweetness with lots of dried fruit - raisin, obviously, but amazingly fresh, nothing like the big black sweet PX wines, some quince jelly, trace oxidative notes and wood, cinnamon, fragrant, quite different to normal (palomino) Sherry, and most attractive.
Palate
Medium-dry, decent tangy acidity balances the sweetness, so doesn't cloy, that quincey-raisin flavour predominates with slight notes of gingerbread, broader, fatter in style to the palomino wines, with perhaps a little more texture, lovely and clean with a very long finish. Delicious, really friendly.
Comments
XS uniquely only make Sherry from PX, and this is a blend of dry oxidatively aged wine from a solera laid down in 1964, and resembling an oloroso, with sweet wine from a solera laid down in 1918 whose wine’s average age is 25 years. Wine is drawn from both soleras (though more from the oxidative solera) and blended by a family tasting panel (rather than by any preconceived proportions) a year before bottling and married in butts till ready. 10,145 bottles were produced in this batch.
One should remember that PX does not have to be sweet, it is just a grape like all the rest and it depends what you do with it. After all the entire production of Montilla-Moriles is PX, but the wines range from pale dry Finos through to intensely sweet PX.
This wine would be lovely with a fairly youg sheep's milk cheese or possibly a crema catalana (creme brulee).
Price About 22 Euros in Spain for a 50cl bottle. As far as I know it is not available in the UK, but you could try topselection.co.uk. Its is a pity it is hard to obtain, but then it  is a very small bodega with private clients as well as trade ones.




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