Pedro Ximénez - 1987 - Bodegas Toro Albalá
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Bottle back -
Bottle back -
Bottle back -
Backlit bottle -
Backlit bottle -
Bottle top
Purchased at a Spar in Skagen, Denmark, then opened a day later. It cost 199,95 Danish Kroner. It says "Ageing 29 years in American cask", which would take it to 2016. Not sure if that means it's been bottled for 10 years, or if the other stages took some of those years.
Regardless, it's been a while since the wine was grapes on a vine.
And got it largely because of being an available half-bottle, and being significantly older than anything else April would see at a grocery store. Though this is a dessert wine, so it coming in a half-bottle is probably the norm, rather than the exception.
Tasting Notes
April - Smells strongly sweet, and maybe musky? When drinking, gave me immediate wine shivers, and tasted like cough syrup. It's sweet, but the raisin flavor is strongly there.
And, after sipping it a few more times, I think it tastes a bit less like cough syrup. It has the raisin aftertaste, and the alcohol levels are not too intense, other than my immediate wine shiver response.
Definitely strongly flavored, and, while I am unlikely to like dessert wines, this one grew on me as I drank more of it. I felt like there were more flavors to explore, so long as I drank tiny sips so that it wasn't overwhelming in the flavor. Maybe something chocolate-y to it?
I did get a few more wine shivers, and the occasional desire for some water to wash out the aftertaste, but on the whole I think it was pretty interesting.
Beyond all that, it's still pretty neat to be able to try a wine where the grapes were on the vine almost four decades ago.
We did try it the day after, using it like a syrup with vanilla ice cream (as Jeanette suggested in her initial tasting), and it worked amazingly well. It was effectively a raisin sauce, with a few extra flavors of interest.
Jeanette - Geruch: schwer, dunkel und holzig-süß, ein bisschen nach Rotwein und Trauben. Geschmack: wie dickflüssige Rosinen die in schwerem Rotwein eingelegt wurden. Sehr intensiv, süß, holzig und leicht alkoholisch. Pur eine gewisse Herausforderung- weil so kräftig im Geschmack. Ich könnte mir vorstellen, dass es in Kombination mit Vanilleeis gut funktioniert.
Aroma: rich, dark, and woody-sweet, with hints of red wine and grapes. Taste: like thick raisins soaked in full-bodied red wine. Very intense, sweet, woody, and slightly alcoholic. A bit of a challenge to drink neat—because the flavor is so strong. I could imagine it pairing well with vanilla ice cream.