The Unexplored Wonders of Unfortified Palomino!
9/7/2024
It has been my intention to write an email about unfortified Palomino from the Sherry region for several years. I can't explain why it hasn't happened until now, but I'm glad that I "waited" (or just never got around to it), as the timing could not be better. There are only a handful of producers focused on making unfortified, and in most cases, non-oxidative wines, and availability of wines has fluctuated, due mostly in part to how little is made. However, this particular moment has provided the opportunity to highlight four producers who stand out to me as some of the most important (if not THE most important) names in the region. I always intended to focus on the wines of Ramiro Ibáñez, Ale Muchada, and Willy Perez, but as of two months ago, I became aware of the man locals call "El Piraña," Juan Francisco Pulido Cabral. He makes wines under the label Vinedos El Piraña, and though the label is relatively young, his family has been in the region for generations. He is consistently the champion of the local "Concursos de Mostos," (the famous grape must tasting competitions in the region), and his wines - even the entry level "Primario" - have impressed and delighted us! The wines from these four producers tell an incredible story and offer a glimpse of what I would consider one of the unexplored and underappreciated wonders of the white wine universe! -Eben Lillie
Our esteemed colleague Ben Fletcher helped me immensely with this project and shares my love for unfortified Palomino. As he explains: "Palomino's prominence in the area around Barrameda, and eventually through the whole Marco de Jerez, is probably explained by its transparency: it reflects so clearly the events of the vintage it is made in and the character of the soils it is grown on. The increasing tendency to blend and fortify wines made with Palomino in a standardized sherry style obscured this throughout the 20th century, but the return to parcel and vintage specific wines is an exciting revolution, allowing wine drinkers to taste a less convoluted and more precise expression of grape, place, and time."
Ben continues: "Two of the projects we've selected to highlight are based in or around Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the spiritual and genetic home of the Palomino Fino grape variety. Palomino came to increasing prominence in the 18th century, used for a wide range of biological (aged under flor, protecting the wine from exposure to oxygen) and oxidative (aged without flor and exposed to the influence of oxygen) wines. Palomino is historically closely associated with Manzanilla, the apple-inflected, biologically influenced product made in and around the town of Sanlúcar. Ramiro Ibáñez (whose wines were formerly called COTA 45) makes wines that are in many ways a revivification of early, unfortified Manzanilas; Juan Francisco Pulido Cabral (of El Piraña) makes wines in a somewhat less oxidative style upriver from Sanlúcar in the important town of Trebujena."
A big thank you to Ben!
[Map from Fernando Beteta, MS]
Now back to my less eloquent prose! The other two projects we are highlighting today are from Willy Perez, who makes the Luis Perez wines (named after his father) and Muchada-Leclapart, a collaboration between Alejandro (Ale) Muchada (from Sanlucar) and David Leclapart (from Champagne), which specifically approaches making non-oxidative, unfortified white wines from the chalky soils of Miraflores in Sanlucar (pictured at the top of this email).
The Luis Perez wines come mostly from the Pago called Carrascal, which is directly north of Jerez, and 20km east of Miraflores in Sanlucar. Willy's family has deep roots in the region, with his great grandfather and great-great grandfather both serving as cellar masters at the famous Gonzalez Byass sherry house, but his fascination has been with making wines the way they were produced before the sherry boom. He first read about the classification systems based on pagos and the unfortified wines of the region in a book from the 1800s and since then he has made it his mission to recreate the wines, a passion he shares with his former classmate, Ramiro Ibanez!
The Muchada-Leclapart wines are from biodynamically farmed vineyards, and come from a total of 4 hectares of vines, mostly in Miraflores, the famous pago in Sanlucar. Ale and David met when Ale was in Champagne working with David at the Leclapart estate. Seeing the great potential to make white wines on chalky soils (the soils of Sanlucar are similar in many ways to the soils of Chablis and Champagne), Ale returned home, with David's encouragement, to start this passion-project in the mid 2010s (their first vintage was 2016 if I'm not mistaken). The wines, though relatively expensive compared to some of the others offered today, are truly some of the greatest examples of unfortified Palomino I've ever had, especially in recent vintages as Ale hones his skill. Though they have changed distributor recently, I feel compelled to thank Ana and Alvaro from Selections de la Viña for introducing the Muchada-Leclapart wines to the US market, at a time when unfortified Palomino at white Burgundy prices was a very hard sell. Not that it's much easier now, but thanks to the restaurants and retailers stocking the wines, and great articles like the Eric Asimov piece in the NY Times last year, interest is increasing, and for good reason!
I am by no means an expert, but I tried to pay as much attention as I could during a seminar with Ramiro Ibanez in New York many years ago, and here are some highlights from my notes:
In the history of the region over the last 3000 years, there were 45 different white varieties and 33 red before phyloxera. Above 45 meters, there is a very high concentration of chalk, with some amounts of limestone, below 45 meters there is more clay and other types of soils mixed with the chalk. Historically, classification of highest quality vineyards was about soil. There are 12-13 subtypes of Albariza soil, depending on the chalk content, and other elements like limestone and clay, and parcels were given status based on the wines they produced. It was an old system that was strongly linked to the parcels and what we call terroir. In many areas, like Jerez, altitude is important, but in Sanlucar it's the wind. The Atlantic Ocean is like a fridge. Closer to the ocean, wines are fresh. Away from the ocean (in eastern Sanlucar or 20km away in Jerez) there is more muscle. The wines are less vertical and more horizontal.
Closer to ocean the Albariza soil is easy to break like rice flour as there is no stress here. Not too much sugar, more freshness. 75% of Albariza soil is Tosca (a subtype of chalky soil), something also very easy for the vines. The rare Barrajuela subtype has lots of stress, and the roots have trouble to penetrate. In the old days, before certain towns specialized in certain types of sherry production, it was all about grapes and soils. In Sanlucar the grape was Palomino, in Jerez there was about 30% Palomino and a lot of oxidative varieties. The solera system and the use of the Palomino grape both originated in Sanlucar, then Jerez adopted these and amplified them. Wines were not blended but were individually produced according to the pago (equivalent of parcel or specific plot). This fascinated Ramiro when he was studying old log-books from the early 20th Century, so he set out to make wines in this old way. His first wine was from one barrel in 2012. This was the beginning of what was known as the Cota 45 project....
Though my appreciation of unfortified Palomino was probably originally sparked by a bottle of Envinate around 10 years ago, once I tried wines from the chalky Albariza soils of Sanlucar de Barrameda and Jerez de la Frontera, I became officially obsessed. I wanted to tell the world about these wines, especially because we regularly geek out about Chenin Blanc and Riesling with our customers and colleagues, and these Palomino wines are to me a must-try, especially for Chenin fans. We highly recommend anyone who wants to be impressed and fully intrigued by a white wine try one (or all) of these excellent unfortified Palominos!
