This was a new one on me and I was fascinated.

Equipo Navazos, who usually select sherries for one-off bottlings have got together with Niepoort to produce a white wine. The first I saw, or knew of, this Navazos-Niepoort 2008 White Wine was when Luís Seabra, the winemaker at Niepoort, conjured up a bottle at a dinner hosted by the Douro Boys after their EWBC tasting. This was not the only interesting wine Luis or the other Douro Boys conjured up, but I’ll stick to the story.

It seems what Navazos-Niepoort were trying to do with this wine is rediscover the roots of the wines from what is now the Jerez DO.  Wine from Palomino grapes, from the best terroir – the white Albariza soils,  aged for 4-5 months under flor and unfortified. There is more about what they were trying to achieve with this wine on the Equipo Navazos website. Admittedly I did not try this wine under perfect conditions. We had been tasting robust Douro reds and then drinking them with dinner, but it reminded me a bit of the “mosto” wines, which are available all around Jerez when it starts to get cold, so late November and December. These mostos are the new wines and unfortified.  The mostos will not have spent the same amount of time under flor, so probably not as complex, but the connection is there. There is a sweet, melon characteristic which I’m sure comes from a bit of time under flor. It appears the wine was bottled by Bodegas Páez Morilla, but I’m not sure where it was made or aged.

I’ve mentioned unfortified wines from Jerez before, and it’s worth reading the comments left on that post by Álvaro Girón.