Mea maxima culpa – massive apologies all round. I attended the Wine Society‘s spring tasting back in March, and had every intention of posting a piece featuring my favourite wines from the tasting. (I knew there would be favourites because I’m a huge fan of the Wine Society’s buying team, who seem to have an unerring instinct for buying impeccable examples of classic wines as well as an aptitude for making unusual discoveries.) And then life intervened. For a period of about six weeks, I was so busy that I didn’t really have time to devote to a write up of the tasting.

By the time I was ready to do my write up, pretty much all the wines I wanted to recommend had received rave reviews from other writers and, as a result, had sold out. One of the wines I wanted to mention was the Ermita del Conde Albillo, a 2011 Vino de la Tierra (the Spanish equivalent of a Vin de Pays) from Castilla y Leon. I liked it so much that I was not only going to give the wine a great review, I was also about to buy half a dozen bottles for a party I’m planning. (This is unusual behaviour for me: I generally have too short an attention span to buy more than a couple of bottles of anything.) Unfortunately, there was only one bottle left.

The good news, though, was that the Wine Society had just received a shipment of the 2013 vintage of the same wine. And, do you know what, it’s just as good as the 2011, albeit less honeyed and developed. The wine is made from 100-year-old vines of a rare white grape known as Albillo Mayor, and its strong point is its amazing texture: the wine seems to slide around your mouth as if it was coated in silk. The fruit itself is fairly neutral – that’s more or less the way they like their white wines in most of Spain. What flavours there are remind me of a lemon tart, with a sharp spike of citrussy acidity to balance the rich vanilla and pastry note. There’s a hint of smoky reduction to add interest, and if the 2011 is anything to go by, the 2013 will develop a touch of nuttiness as it ages.

My only regret about this wine – short attention span be damned – is that I didn’t order another half-dozen bottles to keep for myself once the party’s over.

Rating: A very enthusiastic , especially given the extremely reasonable £11.50 price. (What does this mean? See here for a guide to my rating system.)

Disclosure: The bottle of 2013 was sent to me by the Wine Society as a sample after I discovered that there was not going to be any more stock of the 2011.