Wine Advocate
byLuis Gutierrezthe8/31/2023
The 2022 Macharnudo San Cayetano Vino de Pasto is an unfortified Palomino from Sherry soils, from the famous Macharnudo vineyard in Jerez. The grapes were sun dried for a few hours, and the wine has less biological influence and more limestone influence despite having aged under a veil of flor yeasts; it comes from a plot of more concentration than the regular Macharnudo. 2022 was already an intense vintage; they wanted to avoid the wine being too heavy, and the wine shows superb. The La Escribana also comes from the Macharnudo vineyard, but this wine comes from a different plot in Macharnudo, an adjacent plot of very old vines (older than the others), looking for finesse and definition in the palate. It is more of a white wine than a flor wine. It was a dry year, and despite everything, the wine finished with a moderate 13.5% alcohol. The regular Macharnudo they had produced since 2016 will now include the name of the plot, El Notario, to distinguish it from these new bottlings. This 2022 has a powdery, chalky mouthfeel, very much the expression of the albariza calcareous soils. It doesn't have high acidity but has very good freshness and balance and a tasty minerality that makes you salivate; it's super tasty. This should bloom with a couple of years in bottle. There are some 6,000 bottles. It was bottled in July 2023. This is not in the Jerez/Sherry appellation, but there's an initiative to create a separate appellation of origin for these unfortified white wines.