Comando G - Camino Del Pilar Blanco (Bota) 2018 (500ml)
Wine Advocate: 94-95 Points
There is a still unnamed white matured in glass demijohn with flor for one year and one year in a 600-liter Manzanilla Sherry cask that they've been wanting to produce to obtain a sharp and austere Albillo something not easy with the variety for which the flor acts like a liposuction for the white making the wine sharper and also amplifying the granite sensation on the palate. This was produced with Albillo from Cadalso de los Vidrios and is still unnamed but let's call it 2018 Bota for now. The price was still undecided and the wine I tasted was still in the butt. The idea is that it spends one year in the butt and then another year in demijohn; but for this first vintage it was the other way round spending one year in demijohn first and then one year in butt because they didn't get the Sherry barrels in time. The veil of yeasts is thin and the character is more Jura than Sherry with nutty and spicy aromas and a very mineral palate. This will always be a single vintage and non-fortified. They expect to fill some 1400 half-liter bottles before the end of 2020. Comando G is in the second year to obtain the organic certification of all their vineyards which have been worked organically and biodynamically from the beginning although they never sought certification until now. I had already tasted three of the 2018s from Comando G for my article on Gredos that was published back in April but the rest of the wines were not yet bottled were being bottled or were simply not ready for tasting. Now the 2018s are hitting the shelves and there's a strong demand for information about them. So I tasted the whole lineup together with the (mostly) still unbottled 2019s that are also being offered en primeur in some markets. 2018 and 2019 are very different vintages with 2018 cooler and 2019 warmer following a pattern that has been happening since 2014 of cooler vintages in the even years and warmer in the odd ones and this includes the still-fermenting 2020s which seem to carry the style of 2014 2016 and 2018. However the vineyard work they have done in the last few years and the experience with warmer vintages including inspiration and borrowed ideas from producers as varied as Ganevat Niepoort and Occhipinti has allowed them to soften the effect of the warmer years and still produce fresh and elegant wines in vintages like 2017 and 2019. These are among the most inspiring wines produced in Spain today.
