Equipo Navazos La Bota No.130 Manzanilla Pasada: 100-point sherry, 'Another work of genius'

Equipo Navazos La Bota No.130 de Manzanilla Pasada

Independent sherry bottlers Equipo Navazos are responsible for many of the most exciting modern releases from sherry country. We'd already spotted that their Manzanilla Pasada No.130 was by some distance the most compelling among their recent releases, and it's gratifying to have our opinion reconfirmed by a higher authority. The Guía Peñín is the pre-eminent Spanish wine publication, and their most recent annual review has awarded the Equipo Navazos La Bota No.130 a perfect 100-point score.

The Equipo Navazos project began with a group of likeminded, sherry-loving friends. To guarantee a supply of the sort of sherries they really wanted to drink, they established their own private soleras in the cellars of some of their favourite bodegas. The La Bota No.130 (their 130th bottling of a single sherry butt) comes from a 15-cask solera founded in 1986, in the cellars of a Sanlúcar bodega.

Manzanilla, by appellation, can only be made in the seaside town of Sanlúcar, where the humidity leads to a stronger flor influence than in the hotter inland towns: flor is the yeast that gives sherry its unmistakeable maritime tang. Manzanilla Pasada is a distinctive category of aged Manzanilla, in which the flor slowly dies back and oxidative ageing takes over. It's a fine balancing act, in which the lifted, salt-and-olive freshness of ageing under flor marries with the complexity and depth of gentle oxidative evolution. The Equipo Navazos No.130 is a bone-dry wine of exceptional presence, in which the saline, biological notes derived from the flor are followed by notes of roasted nuts, dried citrus peel, caramel and dried fruit. /NT

Offered subject to remaining unsold. Wines available imminently.To place an order, click on the wines below or call 020 7638 5998