Valdespino Manzanilla La Especial Miraflores 2016
Valdespino Manzanilla La Especial Miraflores 2016
94 pts The Wine Advocate
Manzanilla is a style of fino sherry produced along the coast in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where proximity to the ocean shapes its singular character. These are the most delicate and ethereal of dry sherries, prized for their feather-light texture and bracing freshness. The maritime influence lends a distinctive sea-breeze salinity to the wine’s core of citrus and almond.
The 2016 bottling comes from Miraflores, one of Sanlúcar’s most celebrated pagos, long revered for producing wines of exceptional finesse and grace. For centuries, Miraflores has been synonymous with elegance, and it is the principal source for some of the region’s most legendary Manzanilla Pasada bottlings, including those from La Bota.
This 2016 marks just the second release of a single-vintage Manzanilla from Miraflores. Valdespino captures the vineyard’s ocean-kissed minerality and refined subtlety with precision, marrying its lithe, streamlined structure to a striking depth and intensity that elevates the wine beyond pure delicacy.
Reviewed by: Luis Gutiérrez
Drink Date: 2024 - 2034
The 2016 Manzanilla La Especial Pago Miraflores is a rare single-harvest Manzanilla with a deep golden color and a more developed, complex and slightly oxidative nose, corresponding to an older non-vintage Manzanilla dynamic blend of vintages, because not being blended with younger wines means the wine has a faster development. The wine comes from 70-year-old vines in Pago Miraflores very close to the sea. It fermented in old botas and has concentration through evaporation and 15.5% alcohol, with pungent notes of esparto grass, herbs, sea breeze, saltpeter and wet chalk. They had 30 butts (botas), and they selected 12 to showcase the terroir from Miraflores, complex, subtle and elegant, bottled unfiltered (en rama). It comes in a Rhine bottle. It's a superb white wine. 6,168 bottles produced. It was bottled in April 2024.
There are many changes at Valdespino and the rest of the wineries from the Grupo Estévez, La Guita and Real Tesoro: Long-time winemaker Eduardo Ojeda, also 50% of Equipo Navazos, has retired, but the wines are in the apt hands of Victoria Frutos Climent, who had been working with Ojeda for years. Perhaps the biggest change is that 50% of the group was sold to Macallan, the Scotch whisky producer, in March 2023. The agreement is for Estevez to provide quality wines to season the barrels, where they will age their whisky, the Sherry Cask.
The Group owns around 900 hectares of vineyard, an incredible asset, with a huge chunk (281 hectares) of one of the most prestigious pagos in Jerez, Macharnudo. They have around 40,000 botas of wine in three different villages (Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda and Puerto de Santa María). Valdespino, the jewel of the crown, produces 164,000 bottles per year (La Guita 1.18 million and Real Tesoro 88,000).
The dynamism of the company continues, and they offered a handful of new wines, including their first vineyard-designated white wines from Macharnudo from the low-yielding, warm and dry 2022 vintage.
Published: Oct 03, 2024
A truly unique bottling from a historic sherry house. Even amongst old wineries, Valdespino stands out. The Macharnudo Alto plot, the bodega's most fameous, was awarded to one Don Alfonso Valdespino in 1264! It was his reward for being one of the 24 knights who expelled the Moors from Jerez. Espite that history however, by the time of the 20th century the bodega was dilapidated and near bankruptcy. After being bought by Grupo Estevez and under the direction of "new" head winemaker Eduardo Ojeda, this old house is reminding everyone why it was historically the highest regared house in all of Jerez.
This particular sherry however is the product of a different high profile vineyard, Miraflores in the Sanlucar area. Made from 100% Palomino Fino grapes only the Miraflores vineyard which are naturally fermented and aged under flor for 7 years. That ageing takes place completely outside the normal solera system, allowing this wine to be bottled as a vintage wine. This vintage sherry is then bottled "En Rama," meaning with no filtration.
This stellar and singular sherry has notes of fennel bulbs, brine pools, nutritional yeast, almonds, oregano and apple cider vinegar.
