Your Next Lesson: Amontillado

Also for cooking is excellent!

I think these wines are meant to be eaten with salty nuts, Iberian ham (not the airline) and mostly with seafood. Salud!

We tried the Hidalgo first and quickly noticed the smell of alcohol, toasted nuts and a caramel hue and taste that was darkest of the three. Upon further examination we did notice a light tea nuance. We tried pairing it with an almond encrusted salmon and it just did not work. Later in the tasting we found a simple piece of smoked salmon worked the best and seemed to lower the pungency of the alcohol. The Tio Diego seemed richer on the nose but less complex on the taste with a long, not so pleasant finish. With food, an excellent Ocotopus Pinxtos, once again the alcohol taste was diminished. It was our least favorite. Our favorite was the creamy, cloudy, complex on the nose, Castilla Antique. We got the toffee and nutlike taste and matched it well with a simple slice of Montego cheese. This was not our favorite tasting but there was a lot to learn. George Erdle – Harper’s Fine Dining, Charlotte, NC

Very difficult to find in my town. Impossible in fact. I even went to a big box bargain wine store and only found cream sherries. I was incredibly disappointed. I found a fino Sherry last month and really enjoyed it. So I was very excited to sample amontillado. But unfortunately I couldn’t find it. Any store suggestions? Perhaps in NYC? I’m in the city quite often. Thanks!

Complexity is a fair term to use for these wines because they show so many faces: The Napoleon appears, as Dan noted, like a full-bodied wine with this wonderful mackerel stew. Then eat a green olive, and it goes back to marzipan, almonds, and fruitcake fruit. It is like a kaleidoscope of flavors. Valdespino tastes almost like an amaretto with roasted chicken leg, and expressed notes of dark honey with bay oysters and with split pea and bacon soup, the mackerel stew finally made me confirm the often described orange peel aromas. My father found wonderful notes of walnut in the Antique which he enjoyed with his Christmas duck legs.

I tried a couple of different Amontillados. The dry one, Lustau, was very good but was important to have it chilled. Straight out of the refrigerator. Same with the sweet one. Seemed to have more body. I love Fino but the dry Amontillado was nice with pasta.

Thanks, Wine School, for the otherwise over-budget Rey Fernando de Castilla, and thanks, manager Jan Pettersen, for the mushroom risotto idea. This was a wonderful, wonderful pairing. The RFdC was caramel sweet, which I love, without cloy (if that were a word), with delicate cinnamon and baking spice… and the weirdest, center-of-the-tongue blob of what’s-going-on-here? sourness smack in the middle. It hinted of pickle, which I don’t even like, but somehow, here, it was eccentric, unapologetic and charming. Our Saturday night risotto was porcini’d and liver-less tinyurl.com/y9rvxz2g . Italian food and non-Italian wine often disappoint. Not this time, Barb and I agreed, though neither of us could say why. Of course it was about the sweetness. But I wouldn’t expect sweetness to be so wonderful a mushroom companion. Or maybe it was the texture? There was a bright and lively rivulet of raspiness over an ocean of silk. Or was it the tannins? I didn’t notice the sherry’s tannins but they easily met the mushrooms’. Our side was a strangely good salad of charred asparagus with lemon anchovy bread crumbs tinyurl.com/y9s6ly5y , and the RFdC was zingy and fun with it. Not amazing like the risotto. The food’s crunchy texture was a bit out of place. And the anchovy was a bit less aligned with this, the least fishy of this month’s wines, than it might have been with one of the others. But it was strangely good with the strangely good food, and the meal made us strangely very happy.

The Hildalgo Napoleon was described by my wife as something “an old Lady would like to drizzle on her fruitcake”. Sitting down and enjoying my glass with marcona almonds, serrano and virginia ham, and stuffed olives, I noticed this wine indeed has many characteristics of a German fruitcake (stollen): A nose of warm yeasty dough and roasted almonds, candied citrus fruit flavors, and cardamom. Now that I read Melissa Clark’s recipe for stollen I wonder if there are rum flavors as well. I was so fascinated by the fruitcake in a glass effect, I ordered another bottle.

I am very glad I was saving this years thanksgiving Turkey’s carcass. For the next step in this month’s wine school, I used it to make Julia Moskin’s roast turkey stock. The stock I used to make mushroom risotto. Fernando de Castilla Amontillado Antique had a lighter color (more towards red-orange). The smell was fruity, and I was able to smell the alcohol too. There was an aroma of good cigars, bananas, and dates. Tropical, elegant and Caribbean, similar pictures came to mind as with last year’s malmsey madeira; however, this wine was not sweet at all. The mushroom risotto was a great match. I loved how the flavors travelled between earthy mushrooms, roast carcass stock flavors, and the surprising chicken livers. I managed to send a bottle of this to my father in Berlin. He is very excited and surprised about it, and plans on drinking a glass on Christmas eve. I am very curious about his opinion.

We started this month’s wine school with a comparison between Valdespinos Tio Diego Amontillado and Innocente Fino paired with a Shrimp Scallop Hibachi. The Innocente was tasting very pure and refreshing. I tasted layers of grass, hay, straw, unsweetened chamomile tea, and a certain nuttiness and brininess. This wine seamed very pure to me. It’s anti-sweetness made it a perfect companion for the slightly sweet dish. In the Tio Diego, I was certainly able to taste the fino origins. There are remains of the herbal flavors the nuttiness is more pronounced. This is the smoothest sherry I ever had and the first on my wife liked. There is no way to tell the alcohol content by smell or taste but it will be felt after the first glass. This too is a very dry wine. I got notes of oak, vanilla, and salted caramel. It felt more complex than the Innocente and paired well with the food, but on a different level. It picked up on the darker flavors (if that makes any sense).

Good Evening: Bit of a hectic year, 2017; my first full year of "retirement" seemed busier than my working days. Time to slow down, in fact stop, and savor the past year. Sherry can always assist with that. Sometimes one needs a beverage that will make you think. Served the Tio Diego with the typical assortment of Spanish appetizers--charcuterie, cheeses, nuts, fresh and dried fruits. Music: Sarah Elizabeth Charles, "Free of Form." Modern jazz seemed appropriate for the occasion and indeed proved quite enjoyable. Let sit after opening for 30 minutes to warm up. Hue: Glowing golden brown. Nose: extra-strong, could smell it from over a yard away. Nutty, yeasty, floral, caramel, orange blossom, could smell the flor. Taste: walnuts, orange peel, orange juice, apple, lemon, yeasty, oak, caramel, and a whisky-like finish. Fino origins definitely there in the orange peel and floral character. Flor taste was quite strong. Alcohol felt most strongly in the finish, sort of tingly on the tip of the tongue. Good lesson to finish the year, but I have one more lesson just for myself; try a different Madeira from last December's Wine School (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/dining/wine-school-assignment-madeira.... Thinking about the Malmsey. Hope you all enjoy the holidays.

Opened the Napoleon, reopened the 10-day-old Tio Diego, and sat down to a Sunday dinner that began with apps of Manchego, Marconas, and anchovy-stuffed Manzanilla olives, all with pane Francese toasts, and went from there to David Tanis’ smoked mackerel and chorizo soup tinyurl.com/y9dbmdle (cooked with 1/3 cup Fino, which made stirring and sniffing wonderful, and didn’t seem to hurt the soup none either). Sweet-tooth that I am, I loved the N, and preferred it to the TD by a lot, both solo and in nearly every pairing (only exception being the sour-ish bread, which better matched the TD). The N was fantastic with the smoky salty fishy soup, and picked up nicely on the olives’ anchovy. With the Manchego—12-month aged, and both more tart and more dairy rich than any of the leaner, younger Manchegos I’ve had before—neither wine did better than ok. The N was sweet and sour, fishy and salty, thick and lean, and unlike anything I’ve tasted. It felt like naughty decadence on the high seas, combining taste-bud bending challenge with a lovely sweet satisfaction, too. Barb said it reminded her of Vermouth, which I also enjoy. Don’t quite get, though, how one wine could taste both so sour and so sweet. Not to mention fishy. All at once. Its ABV seemed irrelevant. It drank like an unfortified, if strong-flavored, white. Oddest thing came at the end, with an added garnish of cilantro in the soup. The caramel-y wine went with the snappy fresh herb like a lean SvBl. How weird is that?

We bought all three from Flatiron. You can definitely taste the fino origins. I prefer fino to amontillado generally. I think the lower alcohol and the lightness make it a better companion to a meal. My husband said he thought the alcohol smoothed out the wine. Complexity is a fair term to use. As the wine moves over your tongue the sensations and tastes change. The tag on the Fernando de Castilla described it as "very delicate but very complex" so they think of their product as having complexity. It was also our favorite of the three like velvet rather than corduroy. There's nothing wrong with corduroy but velvet feels especially nice. You can smell the alcohol but we also made jokes about postponing writing our response because you could fell the alcohol on the brain. It loosens the tongue but slows down the fingers. We served it with Spanish meats, cheeses and olives the first night -- classic. The next night we made Melissa Clark's Spicy Roasted Broccoli Pasta and the next night Pad Thai. The amontillado went well with each.

Sherry is hot. At the recent SherryFest held at the Astor Center, the room was filled with Sherry Heads from all over the globe. Drinking sherries that scream salt, spray and crushed stones. These are wines for food and they are pure and crisp. Not at all the cooking sherries of the supermarket.

Seems the handful of sherries I’ve had since fino class—or maybe it’s all those other bone dry wines that Eric’s had us pour—has built up some tolerance. The Valdespino Amontillado did not come as the foghorn shock to my taste buds that I clearly recall from the Valdespino Fino two years ago. This Friday night I had some preconceptions. The VA nose was briny, less vanilla than expected. Taste was less dry, and also less complex, than expected, though I did get a rich undertone of something black olive-y and sea-mucky. It was curious and interesting. Can’t say I loved it. Reminded me, oddly, of Scotch. Dinner was a big chorizo-fig salad tinyurl.com/ybldsy7m (note to chefs: recipe doesn’t say cooked or uncooked chorizo; I think my choice of cooked was a mistake; man, was it salty!). The VA was a functional pairing. It managed with the saltiness; responded pretty well to the sweet figs (weren’t no Savennières and bacon-wrapped dates, though!). For some strange reason (uh, 18% ABV maybe?), as dinner went on and I tasted less carefully, it got more and more enjoyable. Turned really fun. Paired with after-dinner Marconas, the VA was surprisingly disappointing. OK, nothing great. With after-dinner 8-month Manchego… wow, the pungent leanness of food and wine were great complements. Best pairing of the night.

Also makes a good aperitif of equal parts amontillado and tonic water.

After rereading Poe's "Cask" I was in no mood for wine shopping. But the next day the urge returned, and I browsed a few online reviews. Because the word "Hidalgo" holds a personal not–easily–explained meaning for me, I initially leaned toward the Napoleon. But after reading it described as "pancakes with maple syrup," I would have bought the "mineral" lighter colored Tio Diego (even though one said it tasted like corked wine) if it would've been easier to get — ultimately it became as easy but $17 more. The Napoleon was definitely maple and sweet. Coconut. It reminded me of brandy or cognac, only smooth with zero after burn. L— called it nutty. S— called it a dessert wine and said we should be eating ice cream with it. I ate in–the–shell Texas pecans and smoked sardines on bread. S— suggested fruit. Grapefruit would've been perfect, but the jennie was already empty.

The best cinematic allusion to amontillado is in "Babbette's Feast" when the military man takes a sip, and is astonished at the quality. A wonderful movie.

Monty Python should have received a mention, since they are a major booster of this particular wine ["Amantillado! Amantillado!"].