Manzanilla Pasada Bota Punta #60 was bottled from the last barrel of a 15 barrel solera of Manzanilla Pasada: a simply magnificent old Manzanilla, of rarely seen finesse and complexity. This vessel has always followed a different extractions-and-refreshing regime under the alert eye of its true creator: Rafael Rivas, capataz of La Guita, who has been in charge of the Bodega Misericordia in Sanlúcar de Barrameda since the owners of the company Hijos de Rainera Pérez Marín bought the facilities in 1986. This small solera of 15 barrels is also the source of Manzanilla Pasada Capataz Rivas #59 as well as many previous bottlings: #10, #20 Bota Punta, #30 Capataz Rivas, #39 Bota NO, #40 Bota Punta, #41 Bota NO and #50 Bota Punta.
This barrel was not refreshed with wine from the first criadera, but with more Manzanilla Pasada from other butts from the same row in the solera, which in turn were refreshed with criadera wine. The overwhelming combination of power and finesse that this butt already exhibited in January 2008, when it was first bottled, has become, seven years later, a real verbal challenge for even the most skilled poet-taster, all the happier for being defeated at the describing game by this rarest of Manzanillas.
This edition shares the essential characteristics of La Bota de Manzanilla Pasada Capataz Rivas 59, only with greater intensity and purity, no matter how impossible the thought may appear to lovers of number 59. This is truly a wine to dream of, understandably unbelievable unless one has the opportunity to enjoy it in person.
