95 POINTS
Sarah Jane Evans MW - Decanter
Toro Albalá is famed for its aged sweet wines, but its dry wines are also excellent. The Poley range is wonderfully intense. With 35 years this amontillado had some 15 years under flor, and then was aged oxidatively. It is lively and intense, and pungent, with a basket of flavours from red berries through spices to minerals and salinity. Poley refers to the original name of the town where the bodega is based.
95 POINTS
Jacobo Garcia-Andrade Llamas - JamesSuckling.com
This shows salted caramel, leather, cedar, almond and walnut aromas. The palate is luscious, exuberant and layered. There is freshness from aging and a really pleasant salty note. Long, penetrating finish that lingers for ages. From a 35-year-old solera. Pure pedro ximenez. Glass stopper.
93 POINTS
Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The NV Amontillado Viejisimo Solera 1922 Marques De Poley, produced from Pedro Ximenez grapes aged in a solera of old American oak barrels under flor and later put through oxidative aging. It wears a medium amber color with green edges denoting old age (around 35 years) and a creamy nose of sweet hazelnuts, spices and a touch of smoke. Medium-bodied, with lively acidity and pungent flavors, it ends with an intense, bitter finish. Drink 2013-2016.
This is a peculiar winery, a little eccentric and unusual, a family affair created in 1922 although their roots can be traced back to the 19th century. The core of the winery is located inside an old electricity plant in Aguilar de la Frontera, south of Cordoba, in the heart of the Montilla-Moriles appellation and directed by collector, inventor and entrepreneur Antonio Sanchez. They sell 650,000 liters of wine per year, of which 40% is exported and sold in 27 different countries. They are growing in the US, the UK, Australia, and also with increasing interest in Asia, “mainly for the sweet wines,” Antonio Sorgato, the export manager of the firm, tells me. “We are selling sweet wines, but Fino, it’s much more difficult.” This is not something unique to them, as the whole Montilla-Moriles is better known for its sweet, dark, unctuous Pedro Ximenez wines. All the wines they produce are of course fermented from Pedro Ximenez white grapes, but for the sweet wines the grapes are sun-dried, dehydrated into raisins, and the resulting wine is brown in color which gets darker as the wine ages and concentrates in barrel. The oldest examples are an opaque black with an amber rim as dense as motor oil. They have a most impressive collection of single vintage PX wines going back to the time of the Second World War.
93 POINTS
Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The April 2024 bottling of the NV Poley Amontillado en Rama Solera 35 Años a Amontillado has a bright orange color and an intoxicating nose of varnish, hazelnuts and rusty nails but with a gentle peachy twist. It's believed to have an average age of 35 years, some 15 of them under flor. It's velvety with pungent flavors of low tide, seaweed and saltpeter with a salty and bitter twist in the finish. It comes in half-liter bottles. This bottling was of 7,200 bottles. The bottling date is printed on the back label.
93 POINTS
Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The 2018 bottling (June 2018 can be seen on the back label, over the lot number L011702S1918) of the NV Amontillado Viejísimo Solera 1922 Marqués de Poley has a bright orange color and a nose that combines varnish, hazelnut and peach aromas with some iodine and sea breeze aromas. It has a pungent palate, finishing dry and with a pleasant bitter and salty touch.
93 POINTS
Robert Parker Wine Advocate
Names have changed and all labels are new; they are all named Poley and have a reference to the number of average years the wines have spent in the solera, like the NV Poley Amontillado en Rama Solera 35 Años a Amontillado. It has 21% alcohol and 235 years of average age, 15 years under flor and the rest topped up in an oxidative way. It's salty, sharp and pungent, with flavors of saltpeter, iron and iodine, finishing dry, long and with a salty twist. It's pungent, complex and very long. All Poley wines now come in 500-milliliter bottles. There's no clear indication of saca or bottling date. 10,000 bottles were produced.
93 POINTS
Luis Gutierrez - Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The NV Amontillado Viejisimo Solera 1922 Marques De Poley, produced from Pedro Ximenez grapes aged in a solera of old American oak barrels under flor and later put through oxidative aging. It wears a medium amber color with green edges denoting old age (around 35 years) and a creamy nose of sweet hazelnuts, spices and a touch of smoke. Medium-bodied, with lively acidity and pungent flavors, it ends with an intense, bitter finish. Drink 2013-2016. This is a peculiar winery, a little eccentric and unusual, a family affair created in 1922 although their roots can be traced back to the 19th century. The core of the winery is located inside an old electricity plant in Aguilar de la Frontera, south of Cordoba, in the heart of the Montilla-Moriles appellation and directed by collector, inventor and entrepreneur Antonio Sanchez. They sell 650,000 liters of wine per year, of which 40% is exported and sold in 27 different countries. They are growing in the US, the UK, Australia, and also with increasing interest in Asia, “mainly for the sweet wines,” Antonio Sorgato, the export manager of the firm, tells me. “We are selling sweet wines, but Fino, it’s much more difficult.” This is not something unique to them, as the whole Montilla-Moriles is better known for its sweet, dark, unctuous Ped(more...)
93 POINTS
Luis Gutierrez - Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The May 2025 bottling of the NV Poley Amontillado en Rama Solera 35 Años a Amontillado is superb. It has a bright orange color and an intoxicating nose of varnish, hazelnuts and rusty nails but with a gentle peachy twist. It's believed to have an average age of 35 years, some 15 of them under flor. It comes in at 21% alcohol from concentration and evaporation in the casks. It's powerful but with a velvety texture, with pungent flavors of low tide, seaweed and saltpeter with a salty and bitter twist in the bone-dry finish. It comes in half-liter bottles. This bottling was of 6,500 bottles. The bottling date is printed on the back label.
