The Palo Cortado VORS from El Maestro Sierra is believed to be one of the oldest wines of its type in production — estimated at over seventy years of average age, though precise dating becomes impossible at these extremes. Like all the great VORS wines of the house, it is drawn from barrels made by the founder himself, bottled by hand in quantities of around four hundred per year, and presented with the same understated black-label aesthetic as the rest of the range.
The nose is magnificent: old waxed furniture, cigar tobacco, dried orange peel, dark chocolate, ancient resin and a bone-dry mineral depth that takes time to reveal itself. The palate is full and concentrated, with the razor-sharp acidity that characterises very old wines of this type and the uncanny duality — Amontillado elegance, Oloroso body — that defines great Palo Cortado. The finish is enormously long and complex. An irreplaceable wine, produced in quantities that make each bottle something close to a miracle of survival.