LA BOTA DE PALO CORTADO 102

La Bota de Palo Cortado 102 “florpower mmx” is the third release of a groundbreaking contribution to the concept of palo cortado in the Sherry District, and the result of decades of experience and reflection by Eduardo Ojeda and his team. This is a palo cortado that, despite its relative youth, honors the strict requirements of smoothness, purity, and complexity that every wine belonging to this noble category must meet.

This truly delicate and appealing palo cortado is doubly outstanding for being a single-vineyard, vintage wine: it has been sourced from a selection of musts coming from grapes harvested in 2010 in the Pago Miraflores La Baja, in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, old vines (one plot 50+ years old, and a second 80+ years old) that have sourced all the vintages of our La Bota de Florpower, in its white wine, manzanilla and palo cortado versions. It was then aged in Sherry butts and in barriques filled almost all the way up (a tocadedos) in order to avoid excessive oxidation. For this saca we have selected the contents of a few 225 liter barrels (sisters of the ones from where edition No.75 was withdrawn), which were showing outstanding balance and delicacy, combined with the remarkable concentration of the wine ageing in one of the six botas de cañón from where we withdrawn the first edition (La Bota de Palo Cortado 52 “Sanlúcar”).

It is of course a fundamentally oxidative wine, which had only a slight natural and almost inevitable exposure to biological aging in the tanks where the must was waiting for the moment to be fortified up to 17.5% alc. before being transferred to the aging casks. Even in almost absolute absence of flor, this wine boasts the typical minerality of the coastal vineyards in Sanlúcar from where it comes. Indeed, its organoleptic profile evokes other wines that share the same origin, namely the different editions of La Bota de Amontillado 37, 58, 69 & 95, La Bota de Florpower and La Bota de Manzanilla Pasada.

For a palo cortado, its alcoholic strength is a fairly moderate 18%, and this alcohol is perfectly integrated and balanced, making it a very drinkable and refreshing wine–as well as complex and long. Probably the best imaginable match for a long list of oriental dishes, from India to Japan, with a very special inclination toward the Asian Southeast. A true delight of a wine, we cannot hide our enthusiasm for it.