Manzanillas… difficult to explain...

Easy to enjoy. Today I’ve tried a nice, soft fresh manzanilla: Pleamar a product of Bodega Gaspar Florido (I’ve put a TN) but I’ve some problemd describing the wine and the vinification process. For instant, are the adjectives “pungent” and “biting” easy to understand? And what about the “velo flor”, I mean the coating of yeast characteristic of finos and manzanillas….. In addition I’ve tried to shortly explain the meaning of the system of “soleras y criaderas” but I do not kwow exactly how to say this in English…

Please, let me know…. Do you understand my pathetic explanations? If not, how would you improve them?

Many thanks.

Don’t worry Paco,
much more difficult for us to get them !
most people (on here) will understand the solera system but cant help you with
your flor vocabulary I’m afraid.

Let’s face it: with respect to certain wines (Unico comes to mind) and many sherries, one can only describe the link between what one knows as the elements of the raw materials and the vinification process, on the one hand, and what you experience of the wine in the glass, on the other hand, as pure magic.

With respect to sherries in particular, I think it best to write tasting notes based on what you taste rather than what you of how that the production process affect taste and smell. Many people, including many knowledgeable wine drinkers who spend time reading TNs, should be at least intrigued if not amazed by what they read in a good Manzanilla TN.

Hi!!

see if i can help you a little bit.

The Solera system is a method of fractional blending in which old wine is constantly refreshned with younger wine. To ensure consistency, wine is taken from each butt in one criadera to be blended in to each butt of the next.
Each style of wine will have its own solera, which is compromised of a number of different criaderas, or parcels of the same wine at a particular stage of ageing. The oldest criadera is know as the solera itself. When a quantity of wine is required for bottling, an equal amount is drawn out of each of the butts in the solera, this then replaced with an equal amount from each butt in the next oldest, and so on, with the youngest being topped from the añada. This operation is called ";running the scales";.

About Flor I would say that is a yeast which forms on the surface of fino and manzanillas sherries giving them a distinctive taste and protecting them from oxidation.

Much more could be said but I hope that I have been of some help to you.

saludos esther

Many thanks Esther and welcome to the quiet side of Verema. However I was expecting some “real” translations of expressions such as “velo flor” “soleras y criaderas”…. and so on… But I suppose that at the end the Spanish words are used when talking about “generosos”…

Cheers

Of course, Walt but for me is far easy to explain what manzanilla makes me feel using concepts like biological ageing or “velo flor”. In fact, when isolated, some expression such as “pungent biting notes” can be not very attractive to the common reader… or not ;-)))

Do you already have booked to go to “La música del vi”?

Well Ray, I’ve heard that the new hobby of a lot of your compatriots is to come to Spain with an ultra-cheap fare flight, buy a lot of tobacco in Benidorm, come back home and sell it…. ;-) So, just do it, earn some good money and spent the earnings drinking some nice finos and manzanillas and the very edge of the Mediterranean Sea ;-))))))

Well Paco thanks for the idea
I’m off to the bank to discuss the business plan ! ; -)