Ximenez-Spinola Fermentacion Lenta 2021

Profile:

Rich amber. Complex bouquet with raisins and spices. Silky palate, honeyed sweetness, and a long, warm finish.

Food Pairing: Poultry & White Meat

How It Was Made:

White wine made from 100% Pedro Ximénez grapes, which are overripe on the vine for 21 additional days to the conventional harvest. It is harvested by hand and transported in 15 kg boxes to avoid damage to the fruit, which is already mature and less compact than fresh grapes, but full of aromatic and sensory concentrations. It is crushed in a soft-pressing press, with a yield per tonne of fresh grapes of less than 600 litres of freshly pressed must. Immediately after crushing, it is placed with its skins in 300-litre French oak barrels, adding 30 litres to each barrel every day - hence the name Slow Fermentation - so that the yeasts can finish off all the sugars daily and leave the wine completely dry. This total fermentation is especially difficult in the Pedro Ximénez variety, due to its well-known capacity to maintain residual sugars. The musts are aged on lees with gentle battonage for six months in barrels, achieving a very complex structure. The overripe grapes, with their concentration of aromas and flavours, are extraordinarily expressive and have different manifestations than any other wine, which is why the low yields per ton and the slowness of the process make sense. The result is a wine for ageing where the qualities improve each year as they evolve in the bottle, which can easily exceed 15 years, with high levels of quality.