Equipo Navazos - La Bota de Florpower 99 “Antes de la flor”, Andalucia, Spain

TASTING NOTES

As per wine guru Jancis Robinson, this wine is "not for fruit lovers". Sea salt, some cheese notes, wildflowers, hay, soft spices and a delicate and racy mouthfeel. Fine, clean, sharp and a firm structure that will evolve in the bottle...if you can wait...

Experience wine from another time and place...Equipo Navazos is both turning to tradition and revolutionizing the world of sherry. Unlike modern sherry, the no.99 has not been fermented in cask nor aged under a veil of flor. It has only rested for a year in a stainless steel tank, protected from the flor, in order to settle before bottling.

From old vines (up to 80-plus years of age) in Miraflores La Baja, naturally fermented and raised for 12 months in a single, 10,000-litre stainless-steel tank. In the bodega the wine remained protected from flor by topping up and remaining on its lees. The result is not just a fascinating insight into what the table wines of the region may have looked like (before fortification took hold) but it's also simply a delicious, savoury vin de terroir of the bleach-white soils of Sanlucar.

"Smells salty and just very slightly yeasty, even without the flor influence...Dried wild flowers and hay, too. There is a very strong mineral quality but I am not sure where mineral starts and salty ends. Salty in the mouth too, powerful flavour with intensity but almost no weight in the mouth thanks to the very low alcohol. Salty, sour, mineral, with citrus at the very end. Extremely pure, mouth-watering, long. Not for fruit lovers, it's lean but not in the least thin. Remarkable intensity. If you taste this alongside the 101 Manzanilla, there are so many similarities, this is just more delicate and not at all oxidative." Jancisrobinson.com