This is one of the most extraordinary wines produced anywhere in the sherry triangle. The solera was started in 1830 — the year José Antonio Sierra founded the bodega — and has been running continuously ever since, refreshed with successive generations of wine but never emptied, never cleaned, never moved. It is maintained in two enormous 2,000-litre toneles made by Sierra himself, the most tangible physical link between the founding generation and the present day. Fewer than two hundred bottles are drawn each year, and the wine is bottled by hand with minimal filtration.
The average age is estimated at over fifty years; some of the wine in the system may be considerably older. The nose is intense and contemplative: caramel, burnt sesame, flaming tangerine rind, old resin, a distant echo of the Fino that once lived in this wood and a profound mineral depth. The palate is racy and saline with brilliant, almost electric acidity — the hallmark of very old Amontillado — alongside a warmly herbaceous, deeply nutty complexity. The finish is extraordinarily long. This is not merely a great sherry; it is a living connection to the origins of Jerez winemaking in the age of Romantic Spain.