FERNANDO ANGULO
La Charanga Ancestral Orange 2024
Andalusia, Spain
This remarkable sparkling wine is borne from Palomino grown on Fernando’s old vines in La Charanga. The grapes were harvested and dried under the shade of the vines for several weeks using the ‘asoleo’ technique to increase complexity and the wine fermented on the skins for five days and aged seven months on the lees before disgorgement. A wine of gorgeous, amber hue, it is fragrant with citrus and brine, whilst neat tannins frame complex notes of chalk and minerals. A singular wine that offers boundless opportunities at the table.
Palomino
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
From a tiny bodega in the sunkissed and windswept town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Fernando Angulo produces thoughtful, original wines that redefine the sherry triangle.
Originally from Ronda, Fernando developed a love of wine in his youth and has spent the past few decades exploring it as a scholar, journalist and importer. Long fascinated by the history of sherry and its importance to Andalucía, in 2012 he moved to Sanlúcar to see what might be possible if he were able to harness the potential of a marriage of grape and place lauded for centuries.
In the hills outside of town, Palomino is planted on gentle slopes over the region’s emblematic off-white albariza soils. Made up largely of chalk, they retain water long after the rains have gone, allowing the vines to survive the long, hot summer and imparting the resulting wines with invigorating minerals. Under the brilliance of the Andalusian sun, not so far from where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, this bleached landscape provides a dramatic setting.
Having spent the past decade exploring the region’s pagos, Fernando has settled on a hectare and a half of old vines in ‘La Charanga’, a parcel within Pago Mahina which he believes to be the very best in the region. He not only works organically, but also eschews the use of copper and sulphur entirely.
In the bodega, he is self-taught, following his intuition and convictions to produce genre-defying wines. Exercising great patience, he ages his sparkling wines sur lattes and his sherries in large old botas for many years, disgorging or filling bottles from casks in small lots only when he feels the wine is ready.
Made in tiny quantities with no additions, these are wines of striking purity which show the region in a different guise. Gently saline, luminous and fine, they are unlike any we have tried.