An unusual departure from the clean tropical stony flavors of Albariño. An exotic nose, slightly oxydative of honeyed papaya dominates, which carries to the leesy rich palate, balanced with sanded orange acidity and crushed charcoal. A step up and away from fresh, lithe white wine, into a new profile that demonstrates maturing depth and expression. This lovely white was inspired by techniques employed in Rioja, where the wine sits on its lees for extended time in neutral oak barrels, then ageing in bottle before release.

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No scores but I expect something like these as these are both warm years like 2023...

2022: 95 pts Wine Advocate
The 2022 El Palomar has an expressive nose with more exuberance, reflecting the warmer year. It has pungent flavors, with some notes of cereals and honeycomb, and it's gentle and accessible, very approachable and tender. This should be a commercial success, with its velvety texture and integrated acidity, slightly riper. 2,500 bottles and 150 magnums were produced. It was bottled in June 2023.

2020: 97 pts Robert Parker WA
The 2020 El Palomar is an Albariño, and it fermented and matured in a well-seasoned and neutral 2,200-liter French oak vat with lees and without racking until after malolactic, after which it was racked and kept with the fine lees for a further three months. It has 12.9% alcohol and a pH of 3.25 and 6.32 grams of acidity (tartaric). It's fresh and elegant, with great purity and nuance, very expressive and open. It's surprisingly harmonious for such a young wine. I don't remember any young vintage of El Palomar as balanced, open and expressive as this. This is phenomenal. 2,900 bottles were filled in June 2021

This pre-phylloxera vineyard was planted in the 1850s and is one of the oldest surviving vineyards in the world. Like Balado, there is very little topsoil over a mother rock of hard granite. Here, the wine is fermented and aged in a large, old 22 HL foudre and encouraged to finish its malolactic fermentation. Given the incredible vine age, this wine often displays the most haunting complexity and depth of the single vineyards.