by Victor de la Serna » Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:30 am
Hi, Peter! Here's some background info on this very particular sherry, which is not exactly an unfiltered version of Ynocente. There's more of a story behind it. I posted this on the Jancis Robinson site after Jancis' sidekick, Julia Harding, published tasting notes on the Equipo Navazos sherries:
"Some of the better wines she mentions in that group are those made by Equipo Navazos, which will ring no bells with international readers, even if they are sherry fans. So here's briefly the (I think) interesting story behind it.
There's no bodega of that name. There's just three persons who are passionate about sherry and know more about the reality of every bodega, every butt and every vineyard than almost anyone else in the world – not just about the glorious history of sherry, but about its often difficult and controversial situation right now. And only one of the three, Eduardo Ojeda, is a pro. Dr. Jesús Barquín and Álvaro Girón Sierra are so-called 'amateurs'. I wish I could be as amateurish as they are…
Eduardo is the chief winemaker for Bodegas Valdespino, the classic Jerez winery that's been brilliantly rescued from many looming threats since its acquisition by the Estévez group (Marqués del Real Tesoro, Tío Mateo), one of the more quality-oriented of the current sherry producing groups. Jesús is a professor at the Granada University Law School and, of all things, the head of its Institute of Criminology. He now writes about sherry often in top international publications. Álvaro is a science historian who heads the Science History Department at the Milá y Fontanals institute, the Barcelona branch of Spain's Superior Center of Scientific Studies.
The three friends often get together in Jerez, Sanlúcar, El Puerto, Montilla or Moriles and begin sleuthing around. There are many thousands of butts stacked up in dark bodegas throughout those towns, as part of solera/criadera series or stored alone, sometimes for many decades. With so many wineries closing within the continued consolidation of the Jerez scene, many butts are acquired by surviving wineries (or a few new ones), and sometimes track is lost of what's what – and sometimes great wine is forgotten in a dark corner.
The 'Navazos team' goes around, smelling, tasting, discovering gems, and negotiating with the producing winery the acquisition of one or two butts, then they bottle the wine (with full identification of its origins on the label) and distributes it among a small group of friends and fans which includes three of Spain's wiliest importers and distributors (Quim Vila of Barcelona, Alberto Fernández of Madrid and Ramón Coalla of Gijón) and the country's most distinguished sommelier (Pitu Roca of Can Roca in Girona). So a little of each 'butt' (they are called 'la bota de…') does trickle down to the general public.
These are not your usual sherries – fino from Valdespino in Jerez is single-vineyard and eight or nine years old (instead of three, as commercial finos now are); manzanilla from Sánchez-Ayala in Sanlúcar is old-fashioned in its golden color (it hasn't undergone the carbon filtration that renders most modern dry sherries almost colorless); pedro ximénez from Pérez Barquero in Montilla is unusually complex and concentrated, with more acidity and less alcoholic strength than the norm, a testament to the very old age of this solera.
Their best wine to date is also the scarcest: a few hundred half-bottles of Amontillado NPI from Sánchez-Ayala. NPI are the initials for the description given by bodega workers of the butt's age: "Ni puta idea". ("No f…… idea"). It was already considered as extremely old in the 1950s – probably some 100 years old now. The wine is a salty, tangy, unfathomable monster that may be the greatest dry sherry around today.
What the Equipo Navazos is doing is what the bodegas should have been doing for a long time: taking a few distinguished butts off the production lines of brand-styled sherries and thus allowing connoisseurs to become familiar with the greatness Jerez and Montilla-Moriles are capable of. That brings some glamour, some geek interest, to the world of sherry, which badly needs it."
