Bodegas Luis Perez la Escribana Palomino de Pasto 2022

A Vino de Pasto from the laminated Albarizas Barajuelas of Pago Macharnudo. It's aged in 80 year-old bota with 12 months under velo de flor. It's 13.5% natural ABV (no soleo used). 'La Escribana' is a single parcela wine, facing south-east and at 100metres altitude (one of the highest in Marco de Jerez). There's a green harvest, for all the normal reasons, but which also gives a reserve 'green wine' which Willy uses to correct acidity naturally, and add finesse. 'La Escribana' is 'the writer', perhaps a chalk board medium for the illiterate, a translator, documentor, faithful witness.

The wine is a new stop along the Palominos-Finos continuum. As we often find with Spanish, there's a Japanese connection. It's a wine of green bamboo washed by billy tea, of pistachio skin sake. It's Japanese like barely beer witha rice lining.

Gold and green to look and smell. It has a semi-fermentated barley-sake-ricey-acetic tang and gourd skin, paddy-melon-in-the-cool-of-night-edginess. There's a titch of steel and the smell of reeds and rush matting, stripped bamboo, lemongrass outers and typical pistachio skin. It's a wine of lovely depth with some richness, but edged sweet-sour. Importer's notes.