Equipo Navazos La Bota 99 Vino Blanco Florpower MMXIX Antes de la Flor 2019

Screwcap. Jancis, you had us at “not for fruit lovers”. Antes de la flor (‘before the flor’) is another milestone for the Equipo. Put simply, it’s an old vine, single-vineyard and single vintage Palomino, vinified in the classic white wine style. There was no biological aging. Another difference from previous Florpower releases is that No.99 was fermented and raised in stainless steel, not in cask.

As usual the grapes were hand harvested from old vines (up to 80-plus years of age) in Miraflores La Baja. This year they were naturally fermented and raised for 12 months in a single, 10,000-litre stainless-steel tank. In the bodega the wine remained protected from flor by topping up and remaining on its lees. The result is not just a fascinating insight into what the table wines of the region may have looked like (before fortification took hold) but it’s also simply a delicious, savoury vin de terroir of the bleach-white soils of Sanlucar.

Along with the Navazos-Niepoort bottling, La Bota de Florpower is Navazos’ second single-vineyard, unfortified white wine and is inspired by a period in Andalucían wine history before fortification was the norm. While the Navazos-Niepoort is sourced from Jerez's de-facto Grand Cru vineyard, Macharnudo Alto, this wine comes from Sanlúcar’s own blue-ribbon (and most revered) terroir, the Pago Miraflores.

As opposed to the power and structure of Macharnudo in Jerez, here the tosca cerrada albariza soils give more roundness and floral charm to the wines, along with plenty of the oyster shell/iodine salinity that we expect of the finest Sanlúcar wines. At just 11.5% alc, this energetic, sapid and chalky textured wine was born to pair with food.