L'ascendant Solera 2019-2014

Second time around and the verdict holds. Ginger and gingerbread, lemon and lime, white flowers, fruit pastille, a flash of pineapple and a faint oxidative note, all carried on honey - delicate, and it opened up beautifully this time. Such a refined, mineral nose. The catch is the same as before: the palate is fine and chalky but it thins out and fades almost as soon as it arrives, gone before it can make its point. Brilliant on paper and genuinely lovely, yet a solera of this class ought to linger, and this one just doesn't.

Expected more from a solera off its lees for two years. Green apple meets fermented apple, citrus and sea shells, chalk and iodine doing the mineral dance, touch of manzanilla. The nose is genuinely beautiful - sophisticated, mineral, everything in place. But heck, where's the follow-through? All this thin, apple-lemon delicacy with lovely chalkiness just... vanishes. No persistence, no statement. It's tired somehow, like wet chalk that won't write anymore. Still a high score because technically it's brilliant, and that nose really is something. But for a solera with this pedigree, I wanted depth, intensity, something that stays with you. This just waves goodbye too soon. Beautiful disappointment.