What Is a Non-Fortified Sherry- This Rare Spanish White Will Change How You Think About Wine

Hi, this is Nick and Chris here at SaratogaWine.com with a rather unusual, unique, and amazing wine coming from the Sherry region in Spain today. This is the De La Riva Marcanudo San Cayetano from the Sherry region of Spain. Wow, that's a couple words in there, huh? That's not even all of them. A couple of brothers got together and decided to make a dry, non-fortified version, pretty much of a Sherry. Made from Palomino, the grape of Sherry. This wine's been 18 months under floor, but then gets pulled out before it gets fortified and goes into this dry blend. Right, and that's only a portion of the wine, correct? Correct, yeah. So they're really kind of mastering the blending here and still creating that dry, white wine. And it is probably one of the most, if not the most, unique wine I've ever had. Yeah, I mean, vibrantly aromatic, for sure. It's herbaceous. You get that kind of classic citrus, nutty character. That slight oxidative note from the floor. Right, it's like a little kiss. I would put this kind of somewhere in the realm of Albariño meets Sancerne. Semi-on from Bordeaux. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's one of the fun things about the wine business is that you can't just say, oh, this tastes like a dry Sherry. You've got to reference other places and other flavor profiles when you discover something brand new like this. So that's one of the things I love about the wine business. Gets great scores from the wine advocate. I think there's some massive press on these. We were fortunate enough to get a few bottles that they had of the 22 and the 23 vintages, and I think the low score on them is a 96, 97. Yeah, something like that. So, you know, something to keep in mind there. It's really fascinating and unique. I'm kind of getting this like nougat thing coming out of it now, a little peach. Yep, yep. Almost like the nougat off of Three Musketeers bar. Yeah, yeah. It's delicious. I mean... It's really cool. It's actually kind of the more you drink it, the more you really fall in love with it. Yep, right. Once your head gets wrapped around what it is, not what you thought it was going to be, you really start to figure out how delicious it really is. I can certainly see it being a great pairing partner for, you know, grilled fish dishes, you know, seafood, all sorts of seafood preparations. This would be a great oyster wine for sure. It's got a little salinity to it as well. Yeah, you know, like summer vegetables, you know, it's definitely be a good wine to pair with grilled foods. This is definitely a fish wine for sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's one of the things that the Spanish do best, right? A really fascinating new wine, certainly to us and possibly to the United States. I think it's a newer project. Yeah, yeah. I think so too. So yeah, we're happy to be a part of it. Happy to have a few bottles and happy to share it with you. Don't be afraid. It sounds like it's going to be weird, but it's just a beautiful kind of classic European white wine. It's absolutely delicious. And we got them. Yes, we do. All right. Until next time. Cheers. Cheers.