The top wine in the range, this is one of Spain's greatest white wines and quite possibly it's greatest single Albarino.  This is a true collector's gem! With no score for the 2024, I added the score and tasting note for similarly cooler vintages like 2024 below, but the wine has not scored under a 95 since 2017!

2021: 97 pts Wine Advocate
The 2021 El Palomar always has a more classical malolactic sensation with a faint lactic feeling to it. It has notes of yellow fruit, and it's quite expressive, with very tasty flavors and a spicy twist. It spent a long time with lees in oak, without racking or added sulfur, which also gives it a certain creaminess. I like this very much; it really shows the cold year. 2,200 bottles and 150 magnums were produced. It was bottled in July 2022.

2018: 96 pts Wine Advocate
If there is one Albariño that is different from the rest in the Zárate portfolio, it has to be El Palomar, as it's the only one fermented and matured in French oak vat. The 2,200-liter vat is now eight years old and is well seasoned and quite neutral, but the profile of the wine and even the texture is different. The 2018 El Palomar is still in its youth (the first three years), marked by the full malolactic, with a faint lactic hint that makes it quite elegant and serious, a more poised style than the livelier Balado. It's an expressive vintage, more expressive than the 2017 was at this age; it's really balanced and fresh, very classical, and it has all the ingredients to develop nicely in bottle. This is an Albariño from Salnés unlike the ones from before. 2,900 bottles were filled in July 2019.

An incredible track record here:
2023 - 97WA/95VM
2022 - 95WA
2021 - 97WA
2020 - 97WA
2019 - 96WA/94VM
2018 - 96WA

Vineyard & winemaking: This pre-phylloxera vineyard was planted in the 1850s and is one of the oldest surviving vineyards in the world. Like Balado, there is very little topsoil over a mother rock of hard granite. Here, the wine is fermented and aged in a large, old 22 HL foudre and encouraged to finish its malolactic fermentation. Given the incredible vine age, this wine often displays the most haunting complexity and depth of the single vineyards.