Don PX Convento Selección 1931

$495.00

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Toro Albalá Albala Seleccion

Toro Albalá
Don PX Convento Selección 1931

Elaborated with 100% Pedro Ximénez raisined grape clusters. This wine proceeds from the old tradition which is still preserved today: to store at least one butt of the wine elaborated in special years, leaving it for a long, static ageing and waiting for the optimal bottling moment.

The bottling system is called “Convento Selección” in honour to the Cistercian monk system in which the wine is classified in their own series. The entire elaboration is handmade, following San Benito’s Recula Rule: “Living off the work of our hands.”

Older doesn't make it better. But when great age and great wine meet, there is little better in the wine world. This is a very sweet (500 g/l RS), very rare PX from Montilla. Whole bunches of PX were dried 8-10 days on mats, with 90 percent of the bunches flipped half way through. The bunches are pressed within pancakes of rusks to release their thick syrup. In the port-wine-style, distillate from the marc of the property is added to the fermenting must to bring it up to 18 degrees alcohol and killing off the remaining yeast, which rights the sugar levels as they are. The wine is left to settle in concrete for two years, after which it goes into 50-150 year old American oak barrels until just prior to bottling and release.

“If someone told you they kept a wine for 84 years in barrel before bottling, you'd think they are nuts, right? Well, that's what the folks at Toro Albalá in Aguilar de la Frontera - in the province of Cordoba, part of the Montilla Moriles appellation - did with their 1931 Don PX Convento Selección. This is part of what they call 'vinos olvidados,' which means 'forgotten wines.' The border is amber, with green tints that denote very old age. Such old age provides an array of unusual aromas and flavors, including iodine and salt that compensate the sweetness (403 grams) and even the alcohol (18%). It's terribly balsamic, with notes of dry herbs and spices, cigar ash, carob beans (algarrobas), incense and noble woods. The palate is very, very sweet and concentrated, unctuous, dense, with a chewy texture. This goes beyond a glass of wine, a drop of it is like having a piece of cake. I don't think this reaches the complexity and depth of the 1946, which remains the benchmark for these old sweet PX, but it's truly terrific! 9,650 bottles were filled in June 2015. Drink 2016-2040.” - 98 points, Luis Gutierrez, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate