Toro Albala Don PX Gines Liebana 1937 (750ML)

96 WA / 18 JR

The hard-to-believe 1937 Don PX Ginés Liébana, whose grapes must have been picked in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, belongs to the Ginés Liébana range. Like many older wines, it has lower alcohol, only 14%, while the concentration of sugar has grown to 410 grams per liter. At this age, I was expecting something more complex and dense, and I ended up going back to the 1980 for nuance and detail. Don't get me wrong, this is phenomenal, and if you're not used to this style of wine, you'll be blown away. But it felt relatively simpler, with intense aromas of raisins and a dense and oily palate dominated by those same notes. I'm often amazed at how little correlation age and quality seem to have in these old PX wines... This is a limited edition of 1,200 bottles and 24 magnums. It was bottled in September 2018.— Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate

Burnt sugar, gum, cocoa and carob. Great creaminess and smoothness, and less fluid than other PX wines. It offers an extreme syrupy sensation. It is a wonderful wine, a dream, but I find more pleasure in slightly younger vintages, because so much concentration seems almost more like a syrup than a wine. However, its quality is out of the question. And with its concentration, power and roundness, it is out of the ordinary too. Oily back palate. A rare bird in the world of wine. (FC)