1964 Toro Albala Don PX Convento Seleccion
99 The Wine Advocate
$299.89/750ml (Pre-Arrival) Buy Now
My favorite of all the old sweet PXs I tasted this time was the perfumed and showy 1964 Don PX Convento Selección, which still has the wooden label, but it has also been modernized and made easier to read. It is denser than any of the other wines and has a brighter edge, amber, because the center is opaque and black. It has an incredible perfume; it's floral and spicy with fresher aromas than I remember in the other sweet PXs. It fills your mouth, goes down your throat like liquid gold and explodes in the eternal finish. It's an amazing PX with 15.5% alcohol, lower that most, and with 377 grams of sugar, also lower than most. Elegant and intense, simply delicious. There are 4,630 bottles of this wine, all bottled in February 2022. Drink: 2022-2040. --Luiz Gutierrez, The Wine Advocate
In the early 1970's there was a name change for the wine whereby the Convento nomenclature was dropped and only used for the extremely old bottlings.
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1946 Toro Albala Don PX Convento Seleccion
100 The Wine Advocate
$289.89 (ETA 60 days) Buy Now
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 its amazing that you can still buy and drink something so old, and Im 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 Gutierrez, The WIne Advocate
1931 Toro Albala Don PX Convento Seleccion
98 The Wine Advocate
$229.89 (ETA 60 days) Buy Now
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. 2016-2040. - Luiz Gutierrez, Wine Advocate
1955 Toro Albala Don PX Convento Seleccion
98 The Wine Advocate
$215.89 (Pre-Arrival) Buy Now
One more single-harvest, old sweet wine, the 1955 Don PX Convento Selección was bottled in September 2014 and it had been aged slowly in very old American oak barrels and getting thick and concentrated through evaporation. It's 320 grams of sugar are (partially) compensated by 6.5 grams of acidity. It has a nose and palate of chocolate-covered candied orange, spices, molasses. I'd say the dominant aromas in the nose are dark chocolate. It's very dense, developing notes of very concentrated licorice and balsamic, mint, camphor and evolving notes of petrol with time. Complex, rare and unique. 8,400 bottles. -Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
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