TN for Birth Year Wine: 1946 Toro Albala Don PX (Pedro Ximenes) Convento Selección

[John Trombley]

1946 Bodegas Toro Albala Don PX (Pedro Ximenes) Convento Selección (Spain, Andalucía, Montilla-Moriles); $245/750 ml @ Benchmark Wines.

When a bottle purchased for the 71st birthday of my wife Jackie, I note that the abv is now 17 percent, and that it was bottled not in 2011 but in May 2017 (about a year ago), bottle number 310/827; so there has been incremental bottling; no further history available on that yet. We tasted what was in the sample tube (a most interesting idea for this kind of wine), perhaps 10 ml for the both of us.

Yes, extremely clingy, but the tears nearly fall back into the bowl without a pause into the venous-blood-colored liquid. Great harmony from notes of cherry candy, cherrywood smoke, vanillla, moderately sweet chocolate, veal demi-glace, and hints of licorice. And, on the palate, surprisingly moderate sugars, balancing acidiity, and tremendous, lacy finesse, perhaps the most surprising of its attributes. It has real delicacy and an integrated but complex expressiveness, this alone putting it up into high-classic scoring range. 98/100--but remember, these separate bottlings may have a different character to them. It would be lovely sometime to taste this bottling against the one Sr. Gutierrez noted. I agree that this may well outlive everyone who is old enough to buy some legally today; however, there's no reason not to enjoy it now. Drink 2018-2100, if we're still around on this planet to try it!

A very small pour, please!
___________________________________

Letter to JJBuckley from me:

18 pabv. Purchased a 1946 Don Px Toro Albalá as a birth year gift and have read the informative Luis Gutierrez tasting note. Am looking for more technical information and data, plus release dates and amounts, for this bottle. Am looking for more technical information and data, plus release dates and amounts, for this bottle. What was the source of the grapes? It appears to have been bottled in May, 2017, but must then of course have been one of at least two bottlings, given that it was originally reviewed or tasted in about August 2013 by Sr. Gutierrez, mentioning about 800 plus bottles at the time. There are a very great number of tasting notes on CellarTracker by purchasers (users) of that tool. Were the later bottllings reviewed critically, or do we assume that every bottling gets the same score from the same critic? Of course, analytical data would help. The Gutierrez score seems to be just about the only copyright score that has been paid much attention to, but there are other reviews cited, which would always be helpful, as numbers are of minimual usefulness to describe style and quality of what must be a very great wine, if my friends are to be believed. If a better means of communication for this sort of thing would be helpful to you, please feel free to suggest it. Very gratefully yours, John Trombley

This is a peculiar winery, a little eccentric and unusual, a family affair created in 1922 although their roots can be traced back to the 19th century. The core of the winery is located inside an old electricity plant in Aguilar de la Frontera, south of Cordoba, in the heart of the Montilla-Moriles appellation and directed by collector, inventor and entrepreneur Antonio Sanchez. They sell 650,000 liters of wine per year, of which 40% is exported and sold in 27 different countries. They are growing in the US, the UK, Australia, and also with increasing interest in Asia, mainly for the sweet wines, Antonio Sorgato, the export manager of the firm, tells me. We are selling sweet wines, but Fino, its much more difficult. This is not something unique to them, as the whole Montilla-Moriles is better known for its sweet, dark, unctuous Pedro Ximenez wines. All the wines they produce are of course fermented from Pedro Ximenez white grapes, but for the sweet wines the grapes are sun-dried, dehydrated into raisins, and the resulting wine is brown in color which gets darker as the wine ages and concentrates in barrel. The oldest examples are an opaque black with an amber rim as dense as motor oil. They have a most impressive collection of single vintage PX wines going back to the time of the Second World War. Luis Gutierrez (SOme of this may be copyright material; if it is I'll remove it.