Barbadillo Bota Única 1/2 Amontillado

An Amontillado, tucked away ‘out of sight’ in the San Roberto bodega, has achieved the rarely attained 20 points out of 20. from Tamlyn Currin writing for jancisrobinson.com. I tried this earlier this year and found it quite extraordinary. The taste has stayed with me ever since. 

Jancisrobinson.com 20/20

Deeper in colour than the bicentenary Palo Cortado, with a reddish glow. As I poured it into the glass, I got an instant hit of truffles. Then honeyed roast nuts. Then nail polish and red floor polish and toasted spelt grains and dried orange peel. So dense on the palate that it’s almost meaty – none of the translucency and tiffany of the Palo Cortado. This roars with power, sending goosebumps up and down my arms, the hair on the back on my neck prickling. This is like tasting the fiery heat of sunset, like molten copper out the furnace. Incredible tang. Tamarind! The very essence of tamarind. Blood orange, the earthy-mouth-drawing sharpness of baobab fruit, pecans deep-roasted to the edge of char, chestnuts pulled from the embers, and then so rich on the finish that the aftertaste is like rare duck breast in a bitter-orange sauce. Szechuan pepper. A mosaic of russet, fox red, auric, henna, crimson autumn leaves and then the sweet umami earth-kiss of mushroom. And through all this, for a wine that might be well, well over a hundred years old, the most astounding freshness. So fresh every cell in my body is fizzing with life. Absolutely extraordinary. (TC) 

“There were only two butts of a very old Amontillado from the S. Roberto winery in Sanlúcar, and the wines were so different they decided to bottle them separately. The NV Amontillado S. Roberto Bota Única 1/2 is a wine of incredible finesse and balance, elegant and surprisingly light for such an old wine. It is less concentrated than the other barrel (2/2) and has a lot more elegance. It’s unusual to find such old wines with this balance, as extreme evaporation often means unbalance, but there’s none of that in this wine that has clarity, purity and finesse to make it dangerously easy to drink. There are only 1,300 half bottles of this magnificent wine. The butts were large, not the same size and with different evaporation, or ullage.” 98pts Luis Gutiérrez The Wine Advocate