Palomino

Palomino is the great white grape of southern Spain and the backbone of Sherry, the fortified wine of Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia. On its own it is a fairly neutral, low-acid variety that yields pale, unremarkable dry whites, but under the chalky albariza soils and blazing sun of the Sherry triangle it becomes the raw material for one of the world's most distinctive wines. Fermented dry and then transformed by the flor yeast and the solera system of fractional blending, Palomino gives everything from the bone-dry, saline tang of Fino and Manzanilla to the nutty depth of oxidative Amontillado and Oloroso. A growing number of producers now also bottle it as an unfortified still white to show the grape's own quiet, mineral character. From the bodegas of Jerez to the dry whites of Galicia and the Canaries, it is the taste of the Spanish south in a glass.