NV Equipo Navazos La Bota 56 Pedro Ximenez

The greater part of the wine ageing at Bodegas Rey Fernando de Castilla dates back to purchases made some two decades ago when our friend Jan Pettersen took over the management of this small and refined sherry house. Once, while purchasing old sweet PX wines to refresh their own soleras, he realised that their provider had dismantled the PX solera in order to sell the empty butts separately. Fortunately, inside these there was still some very old and (necessarily) extremely dense PX, almost muddy at the bottom of each butt. Jan insisted that this be part of the deal. Since then he has preserved those butts under his care. This is therefore a wine that is different from the old PX from RFC bottled almost three years ago as number 36 in the La Bota series. This PX has a somewhat Montilla style, originally low in alcohol (around 12.5%) that needed adjusting to reach the minimum legal requirement of 15% – which is why it has additionally benefited from the extra age needed in terms of integration and rest. The wine, very dense and concentrated, is now spectacularly delicious. We fell in love with one specific butt and so chose this one for bottling as number 56, in this case a single cask edition and necessarily a limited release. While its average age is hard to determine, our conservative estimate is well above forty years. Blackish mahogany. The sweetness dominates the nose. Brown sugar. This is making a beeline for my dodgy tooth. Not quite as distinctive as most of these Equipo Navazos releases. It is quite difficult to haul off the syrupy sweetness from the wine. Liquorice syrup. My fault perhaps but I cannot discern that much complexity. (JR)