Brandy Ximénez-Spínola Battonage

When making its “Cosecha” wine, exposure to the sun slowly and gradually dehydrates each grape berry, evaporating water and concentrating natural fructose. Only 200 liters of must are obtained for each ton of fresh grapes, which ends up giving the wine a very low final yield. This wine acquires 13% natural alcohol when fermented in French Oak barrels. Then we stop the alcoholic conversion process by hermetically covering the barrel, which favors the preservation of fruity aromas and flavors, which we do not want to lose due to oxidation.

Finally they distill this wine and let the result rest again in wood.

In this very delicate elaboration, they limit the aging to 8 months in the French Oak barrels of the same wine that they have distilled, avoiding the excess of oak and astringency -which could only be balanced after many years of aging, in other barrels that contained our Pedro Ximénez Very Old-. On the other hand, in the same barrel of its "Harvest", on the "lees" of its wine fermentation and with a continuous battonage that gives it flavors and aromas of ripe fruit, this Brandy -after a gentle filtration-, opens to a universe of perfumed sensations, full of flavors and aromas other than oak. This elaboration is based on such a delicate raw material that it is not worth waiting for the wood to hide its fruity emotions... It maintains the alcoholic strength at 40%, so that, despite that fruitiness, it maintains its character as the purest and most authentic Brandy.

It is a very clear straw gold brandy, clean and bright, subtly oxidized, but without the typical iridescence of old age typical of the solera system. Visually, it conveys a lot of purity of origin, since there are not even easily identifiable edges, nor notable differences in tonality in the glass, both when the glass is still and in rotation.

A still glass is a clear distillation with the aromas of the wine that gives rise to it. There are notes of ripe plum but not raisined. When the glass is rotated, memories of green apple arrive, without the alcoholic volatility unbalancing the exuberant and clean fruity manifestation of this very particular distillate.

The evident manifestation of its alcoholic strength does not detract in any way from the fruits that are enhanced on the back of the palate, as well as the volume in the mouth acquired with the battonage of the lees. The aftertaste is long, although very delicate and subtle. Nothing heavy, nice and silky in the extreme.