Sherry Experts - please help me

Drinks Chat
#1

I don’t know much about sherry. We’ve been having a glass of The Society’s Fino when coming back after a long country walk, but it’s a bit too austere on it’s own, so I’ve just bought

which @DJB79 spoke highly of here

but I’m puzzled and would like an explanation.

TWS says it

was voted a 2013 Wine Champion at our annual blind-tasting competition to find the best of The Society’s range for drinking now

and on the wine details it says it should be drunk

Within two years of purchase - A non-vintage wine that is ready now but will keep for two years.

2013 was six years ago, which means the champion wine should have been drunk by 2016.

Is the bottle I have bought the same wine? If not then its not a wine champion,…

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#2

“How long does it take a Solera produced wine to become a different wine?” is sort of an unanswerable question. Presumably it can change over time if there’s a sufficiently permanent change in the inputs, but (presumably because it’s acting as sort of an exponential weighted moving average over the years) I’d be surprised if a new bottling now tastes substantially different from a 2013 bottling in 2013.

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#3

In my mind, as the idea of a solera system is to keep consistency and the wine is constantly refreshed with younger wines, it is highly that the wine is very similar in style to that in 2013. I’m not sure how often this wine is bottled but I can’t imagine you would have a bottle from a 2013 bottling…it certainly seemed too fresh to me for that. In saying all that, should TWS be celebrating a champion from 7 years ago?..maybe a refresh of the description needed.

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#4

I suppose the other thing to say is that it sounds like this particular wine has had some PX blended in - provided that blending is consistent, then with the comments above about the (relative) stability of large soleras, then I imagine the wine should not change much from year to year.

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