From the Iberian Peninsula to Madera, California USA Via Fresno (and other places nearby)
Fresno county, an agricultural area known for its plump and juicy raisins, lies to the south of the important Madera wine appellation and is home to Gena Nonini and her biodynamic Demeter certified Marian Farms. Gena is the grower (or land steward) of the Palomino Fino grapes used in our new wine: Palomino Fino.
Please don't call our wine: "Sherry"
It's Palomino Fino, named after the grape from which it was made and in a style which if it were sherry, would be: Amontillado - a sort of aged dry sherry. Confused ?
Let me explain. After the idea that much of the quality of a wine results from its place of origin, wines are often named after where they come from. Genuine sherry comes from Jerez y Sanlucar, a place in southern Spain. The word "sherry" came about because the English speaking founders of the wine trade there had a hard time with their Spanish consonants. As it wouldn't be right to label "California Oranges" as "Florida Oranges", it isn't right to steal the name of a famous wine from another place. Using the same grapes and methods doesn't make our wine Sherry.
But what about the wine ? Sherry and Palomino Fino are anachronistic in today's wine world. Their flavor comes not from grapes as in other wines, but to a significant degree from a microorganism, the flor (as in flower) yeast which grows on the surface of the aging wine. In young wines (fino sherry for example) the flor contributes a fresh bread like character. Prolonged aging under the flor develops richness and complexity. Quady's Palomino Fino spent 5 years in barrels under the flor. The aroma of flor aged wine is often described as "nutty". It is in fact complex and wonderful but difficult to describe. It seems to explode from the glass. Wheny ou drink our Palomino Fino (chilled as an aperitif before dinner) there is a sense of captured time as in the genie emerging from Aladdin's lamp.
The word "Amontillado" brings to mind Edgar Allen Poe's Cask of Amontillado; a brilliant horror story written in 1846 in which Montressor lures his tormentor Fortunato into a crypt with the promise of a taste from a phantom pipe of rare amontillado sherry. Fortunato ends up shackled and walled into the crypt.
In 1846, sherries and amontillados were well known, valuable, and people actually owned pipes (a cask of about 140 gallons) of them. In appreciating Palomino Fino, one can reflect that in the 1800s, this was the wine style along with Maderia enjoyed by knowledgeable and wealthy Americans.
Quady's Palomino Fino is indeed rare. The solera produces only 85 cases per year.
The wood cut label art by Elizabeth Auer illustrates the forces of the sun's rays and the sherry making process, also used by us, where palomino grapes are allowed to shrivel for a few days on mats before being made into wine.
Available from Quady Winery while supplies last.
The actual flowers are tiny, about 1/32 of an inch in diameter. In a few days the blossoms will fall off the tiny berries. Normally only about half of the grape berries are pollinated. (Grape vines self pollinate.) This is a good thing because we don't want the clusters to be too tight. In our hot climate we need air circulation inside the bunch of grapes to prevent bunch rot. 
