95 Luis Gutierrez - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

"The relatively old NV La Bota de Amontillado 61 Bota NO was offered in the past as number 31 (bottled in October 2011), aged 35- to 40-years-old. It comes from a 'solera' that is marked as “Manzanilla Amontillada Vieja” in the winery, Sanlúcar Viejo, belonging to Rainera P. Marín (La Guita). The wine is thought to be around 40-years-old on average and is an elegant and harmonious Amontillado, quite different from the very old and concentrated Amontillados. The style they aim for here is to age the wines with the barrels fully topped-up, so the wines age slowly and feel comparatively younger than what they are, but at the same time they are more elegant. 2,000 half-liter bottles were filled at the end of 2015.

Every 16 months I sit down with the prolific Equipo Navazos and invariably they have some 20 different wines to show me. Yes, some of those are different bottlings of the Manzanilla I think, or their PX Gran Solera, but the great majority are brand new wines. The whole thing is quite geeky and the wines follow a numbering that means nothing other than the order in which they have been released. Equipo Navazos are in great part responsible for the rebirth of Sherry and they already celebrated their 10th anniversary in December 2015. Happy birthday, guys! Besides their 'regular' releases, or their usual sources, they also keep unearthing hidden gems (in Chicana this time!), and although some of the very old wines can be too aggressive and concentrated for the faint of heart, they are really unique and world class."