Saturday 3 September 2016

Oloroso en rama Añada 2009 19%, Williams & Humbert

Appearance
Pale topaz-amber fading through gold with brass highlights, legs.
Nose
Youthful oxidation with a hint of toffee apple, some apparent sweetness tempered by a gentle nuttiness and traces of autumn leaves. It appears quite young and without the concentration, even definition - of age but is definitely Oloroso with its generous rounded character and the slightest traces of warm spices. Not yet fully knit, but still quite fragrant and most attractive.
Palate
Full bodied and nicely rounded, in fact slightly more generous than the nose, with distinct caramel notes like guirlache (nuts in brittle tofee) and faint hints of spice. This is delicious with more than a little glycerine making it very smooth and its 19% giving it considerable length. Big but elegant, and above all really interesting.
Comments
After nearly a century of laying down butts of vintage wines which all turned out as oxidatively aged wines, Williams & Humbert's oenologist, Paola Medina, started experimenting with vintage crianza biológica wines back in 2001, and the results have been amazing. Now they are also releasing much younger oxidatively aged vintage wines which give an insight into how they develop, and are more affordable. This wine, bottled in February 2016, is six and a half years old, much the same as the average age of many a commercial Oloroso, but appears much younger because it was aged in a sealed butt and never mixed with any older wine as it would have been in a solera. As with the other wines in the range, the grapes came from old vines in the firm's Añina and Carrascal vineyards, and selected musts were fortified to 18% and sealed up in butts. 89 Parker Points.
Price
11,20 euros per 50cl bottle from Licores Corredera


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