Cota 45

The winery's name is a contour line. Forty-five metres above sea level is where Ramiro Ibáñez places the albarizas that interest him, and that is where Cota 45 came from. In the Marco de Jerez between fifteen and twenty different types of albariza are distinguished.

Ramiro Ibáñez is from Sanlúcar de Barrameda. He studied oenology, spent three years working around the world and came home in 2009; in 2012 he set up the winery. His wines come under three labels — UBE for the biologically aged, Agostado for the oxidative and Pandorga for the sweet — and they come from specific Sanlúcar pagos: Miraflores, Carrascal and Maina.

They are vinos de pasto: still wines with no added alcohol, as they were made in the Marco through the nineteenth century before the practice was abandoned early in the twentieth. The strength was raised in the vineyard — low yields, late picking, sun-drying the fruit — and not in the cellar. In nineteenth-century price lists these wines cost more than the fortified ones, precisely because of what it took to work them that way.

UBE Miraflores comes from four vineyards: two in Miraflores Alta, on tosca cerrada and barajuela with more structure, and two in Miraflores Baja, near El Carrascal, on lentejuela, polvillejo and lustrillo. It is 100% Listán Blanco.

Whole bunches are pressed at low yield, the must is racked into an old manzanilla butt where it ferments on its own with no temperature control, and it ages nine months in that same butt.