Last Port Before Crossing
TASTING NOTES: “Manton de Manila is named for the colorful shawl the women of Toro wear usually during the winter. Rich, baked plums, hot stones and olives transport your nose to the arid Toro region. There’s enough freshness to brighten up the full-bodied palate, with a silky rounding of polished tannins. Special soil and old vines make the Manton de Manila 2023 a wonderful expression of Toro.” (AbV 14.5%)
VARIETALS: 100% Tinta de Toro (Tempranillo). Vines 24. Sand, clay and lime bearing Puddingstone soils. at 2,427’ elevation.
BARRELS: 6 months French Oak
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Manton de Manila — the shawl these grapes are named for.
Manila shawls have never been to Manila. They’re silk, hand-embroidered, fringed the length of your arm, and about as Spanish an image as the fan or the flamenco dress — you’ll see them draped over pianos in period dramas and shoulders at Seville’s Feria de Abril. But the silk was Chinese, made in Canton, and it got to Spain by riding the Manila Galleon route: ships that ran between Acapulco and Manila for two and a half centuries, moving Chinese goods to the Philippines, then across the Pacific to Mexico, then overland and across the Atlantic to Spain. Manila was just the last port before the ocean crossing — a layover that somehow ended up in the name forever, while Canton, the actual place that made the thing, got completely written out of it.
So the shawl spent something like four centuries being misfiled by geography before Spain fully claimed it as its own. I like to imagine the actual embroiderers in Canton finding out, a few hundred years later, that their signature product is now considered a quintessentially Andalusian object named after a city they never shipped anything to directly. That’s a hell of a branding accident to have no say in.
PRODUCER PODCAST: Carodorum Manton de Manila Tempranillo (1:03)
ICYMI, you have two choices:
Worried Summer heat might get to your wine before your wine gets to you? Order from the sale linked here, and we’ll get it to you at a cooler time of year !
Want it shipped now? Every package during the summer will have protected temp control ground shipping for much of the country that takes longer but will ensure safe delivery. Expect up to two weeks for delivery. Now through the September 12th offer.
