Barbadillo Manzanilla Salicornia En Rama Organic Sherry

This organic certified Manzanilla sherry was bottled direct from the barrel, with no filtration (En Rama).

It has a deep yellow colour, with delicious honeyed and salty aromas. It is amazingly salty and  rich on the palate, fuller in body than most Manzanilla sherries and far more complex in flavour. It has a very long finish. A seriously impressive and unique Manzanilla. 15% alc.

Drink with salty snacks, cured ham, many different soups (often hard to match with wine), fish and shellfish. Serve well chilled from a normal, decent-sized wine glass.

This wine’s fabulous concentration is the result of long ageing in Barbadillo’s cathedral-like cellars on top of the ridge in the town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the home of manzanilla-style sherry at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. Palomino grapes grown on Barbadillo’s 100% estate-owned vineyards wines are fermented in stainless steel tanks using yeasts that Barbadillo have selected and cultured from their own vineyards. The wine is then fortified with a wine-based distilled spirit to raise the alcohol to 15%. Higher or lower than this, and the all-important “flor” will not form well or will die off. The sherry is then matured for just under seven years in well-seasoned 500-litre American oak casks in the winery’s solera system, whereby younger wines are fractionally blended with older wines for a consistent style. At Barbadillo, the solera has eight stages (known as criaderas), which involves a huge amount of work as a proportion of wine in each barrel is moved to another each year, adding layers of complexity.

Thanks to the ocean breeze and the location, size and shape of the low-lit and well-ventilated ageing cellars, the temperature and humidity remain relatively stable throughout the year, allowing a veil of “flor” yeast to form and float on top of the wine inside each barrel. This flor is the unique, magic ingredient which makes Manzanilla sherry taste as it does. It protects the wine from oxidation, creating distinctive briny aromas and intense, mouth-watering seaside flavours.