B Rodríguez Goyesco amontillado review

B Rodríguez Goyesco amontillado in a nutshell

A young, fresh and highly drinkable style of amontillado. It’s a great all-round sherry, superb with tapas but also works after dinner too.

Full review

In Victorian times, amontillados were the most prized kind of sherry. Dickens was an enormous fan. And, of course, Edgar Allen Poe wrote his chilling story A Cask of Amontillado about a man lured to his doom with the promise of a fabulous and rare wine. Part of the reason these wines were so prized is because there were many wines masquerading as them, that were either adulterated, sweetened or didn’t contain any genuine amontillado at all. True unsweetened wine was extremely rare in Britain.

There is a reason for this. Pure amontillados can be quite hard work: mouth-puckeringly dry and salty, they’re not for everyday drinkers. I’ve tried many that would probably have been better in a blend. Not this one though. La Goyesco is a very jolly, youthful take on the style. It’s from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, so it starts off as a manzanilla. It’s aged for five years under flor (a yeast which stops oxidation), and then three years more with oxygen contact, preserving that fresh apple flavour but being joined by notes of orange peel and hazelnut. It’s a very versatile food wine.