Alejairén 2023

Alejairén is made by El Vínculo in Campo de Criptana, in D.O. La Mancha, one of the four wineries of Familia Fernández Rivera. It is an unusual wine, a serious barrel-aged white from Airén, the workhorse grape of central Spain, taken here from selected old vineyards on the high, dry La Mancha plateau. The climate is continental and extreme, with hot days, cold nights and low rainfall, which keeps yields modest and the fruit concentrated. The wine spends twenty four months in American oak barrels, a long ageing for a white, and the slow oxygen exchange through the wood, together with the vanillin and toast of American oak, transforms the wine into something rich and savoury. Time on the lees adds a further creamy depth. The colour is deep gold. The nose is dominated by oak-derived aromas of vanilla, toasted bread, hazelnut and toffee, with ripe white peach and a beeswax note beneath. The palate is full and rounded, the acidity gentle and the finish long and nutty. Serve it at 11 to 13 degrees in a broad glass. It suits roast chicken, oily fish, pork and hard nutty cheeses.