500 ML NV Ximenez-Spinola Delicado PX Cosecha

Clean bright almost pure amber with brassy golden highlights and some visible viscosity. In a standing glass, the aromas of fleshy fruit stand out: peach, apricot, and ripe plum but not ravaged. Rotating the glass awakens the pear and green apple, with the French oak providing no more than a slight hint of bitter almond, which balances the exuberant profusion of its fruity manifestation. A balanced experience on the palate from start to finish, which echoes the aromas and makes the mouth water with a pleasant underlying acidity underlying intense sweet fruit flavors.

Sweet, yes, but nowhere near as sweet as normal PX and much lighter too, both in weight and alcohol. The acidity level is perfect to carry through the flavour, mitigate the sweetness and give a real freshness to the wine. Great length, and quite possibly a long life ahead in bottle.

"On harvest days in our winery, we breathe the essence of clean and ripe fruit. Normally, as the wine ages and oxidizes, these aromas give way to others of greater complexity and less olfactory and gustatory fruitiness. But in this wine, we have preserved everything that a sweet Pedro Ximénez would have lost with the passage of time and the excessive contribution of oak."  –José Antonio Zarzana, Winegrower

Bodegas Ximénez-Spínola, founded in 1729 by the Spínola family in Jerez, is now led by ninth-generation member José Antonio Zarzana and remains focused on small-scale production rooted in Pedro Ximénez. The estate built its name by releasing only its best barrels, a practice that later inspired the creation of its limited-release brandy when José Antonio’s grandfather began fortifying unsold wine. Today only about 3,000 bottles of brandy are made annually, each signed by José Antonio’s father, while total wine production never exceeds 12,000 bottles. Their fortified and sweet wines come from grapes dried in the sun and rotated by hand until the fruit concentrates, then aged in American oak, yielding some of the region’s clearest expressions of Pedro Ximénez.