2021 Bodegas Luís Pérez la Escribana Vino de Pasto

WINEMAKER: Willy (Guillermo) Pérez
REGION: Jerez, SP
VARIETAL: Palomino
VITICULTURE: Organic

It’s aged in 80 year-old bota, with 12 months under velo de Flor, and has 13.5% natural abv, without soleo. There’s a green harvest, for all the normal reasons, but which is also fermented to give a reserve ‘green wine’ which Willy uses as a natural dilutant, to correct acidity naturally, and add finesse. As we often find with things Spanish, there’s a Japanese connection: it’s a wine of green bamboo washed by billy tea, of pistachio-skin sake. It’s Japanesque like barley beer with a rice lining.

Gold and green to look and smell. It has a semi-fermented barley-sake-ricey-acetic tang and gourd skin, paddy-melon-in-the-cool-of-night edginess. There’s a titch of steel and the ripe, slightly dried grass smells of reeds and rush matting, stripped bamboo, lemongrass outers and pistachio skin. It’s a wine of lovely depth with some richness, cut by stoniness and edged sweet-sour with the acetic ID of Macharnudo, and spicy-vegetal at the end.