El Palomar Albariño, Zarate 2022

The 2022 El Palomar has an expressive nose with more exuberance, reflecting the warmer year. It has pungent flavors, with some notes of cereals and honeycomb, and it's gentle and accessible, very approachable and tender. This should be a commercial success, with its velvety texture and integrated acidity, slightly riper. 2,500 bottles and 150 magnums were produced. It was bottled in June 2023.

Medium lemon with a tinge of gold. Deeply savoury and lactic with a smear of salted cultured butter, cedar spice, white button mushroom and dried yellow apple on the nose. Full and concentrated on the palate with elevated acidity that's broad and soft rather than tart. Layers of dried leaves, cedar, pickled and salted peach preserve and nutritional yeast on the lengthy finish. I wouldn't have placed this as Rías Baixas Albariño – I think I would have been debating between the flavour profiles of a spicy northern Rhône Marsanne and a Chablis with an abundance of soft lactic acidity. This is, for me, an entirely new experience of Albariño. Delicious! I'm a fan. (SCJ)