Amontillado

What amontillado is

An amontillado has lived two lives. In the first it was a fino, pale and lean under a veil of flor. In the second the flor has died and oxygen has reached the wine, building amber colour and nutty depth. The finished style carries both signatures: the sharp yeast-driven attack of the biological phase, then the walnut, dried fruit and caramelised toast of oxidative ageing.

Alcohol runs between 16 and 22 percent. The wine is always bone-dry by Spanish definition, unless deliberately sweetened with PX or Moscatel must, in which case it becomes a medium.

How it forms

Two routes lead to amontillado. The slow route is accident: a fino butt loses its flor naturally over time, often because the yeast cannot find enough nutrients to keep regenerating. The fast route is deliberate. The cellar master refortifies a fino solera to 17 or 18 percent, which kills the flor and tips the butt into an oxidative criadera. Either way the wine then ages for years without the protective yeast layer.

VOS amontillado is certified at twenty years minimum, VORS at thirty. Many serious amontillados without those labels easily reach the age, they simply lack the paperwork.

The classic confusion

The most common mistake in the English-speaking market is to picture amontillado as the medium-sweet supermarket style that Bristol shippers sold for decades. That sweetened blend is technically a separate category since the 2009 DO revisions. Genuine amontillado is dry and savoury, and the resemblance to the old commercial product stops at the colour.

Anyone whose only point of reference is Croft Original or Harveys Bristol Cream will need to recalibrate. The London sherry-renaissance bars have spent fifteen years trying to undo this.

How to serve it

Twelve to fourteen degrees Celsius, in a generous white wine glass rather than a tiny copita. Pair with aged hard cheese, smoked almonds, mushroom risotto, oxtail stew, or a clean consommé. An open bottle keeps two to three months in the fridge before fading.