Pedro Ximénez

Food match: vanilla ice cream or dark chocolate

Bodegas Emilio Lustau was established in 1896 and was initially a small family concern until the founder`s son-in-law placed it on a business footing. The firm is perhaps best known as pioneering the Almacenista system, whereby individual dry Sherries are produced from small private holdings. These are bottled under Lustau`s name but with the individual bodega's name on the label as well.

Darker than the night and richer than Croesus: this is to be poured, nonchalantly, onto ice cream. Made with Pedro Ximénez grapes, which are dried under the hot Spanish sun, concentrating the sweetness to create a thick, dark grape must with intense flavours of raisins and molasses that is then fortified and matured in solera.

This superb Pedro Ximénez comes from one cask selected from a Solera of six set aside as a family reserve in the 1930s. Opaque, dark mahogany in colour, with an amber rim. This wine is reminiscent of figs, dates, raisins and liquorice on the nose. Spectacular flavour and density, but not at all cloying. Its light acidity leaves the palate clean. Very long aftertaste.  
Simon Field MW - Wine Buyer

 

The 1946 Don PX Convento Seleccion produced with Pedro Ximenez grapes dehydrated under the sun at the time of the Second World War, was only bottled in September 2011. This is an extreme wine, my first descriptor was ultra-mega-super concentrated. It is unbelievably powerful, both in the nose and the palate, full of umami, with sweet cinnamon, Christmas cake, camphor, petrol, lemongrass, Belgian chocolate and butter. Incredibly complex and rich, sweet, balanced and smooth in the palate, it is both very sweet and somehow salty, and with time it develops a black olive note. It combines the texture of the 1962 and the elegance of the 1949. It is as decadent as it gets. 825 bottles were produced. This wine will survive all of us. These wines are kept for generations and offered in very small quantities, but it’s amazing that you can still buy and drink something so old, and I’m even tempted to say that it might represent good value for what it is. A real tour de force sweet wine. Drink it if you ever have the privilege to do so from 2013-2060.
Luis Gutiérrez - Wine Advocate, August 2013

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.
Luis Gutiérrez - Wine Advocate, April 2016