Toneles is among the most unusual wines produced anywhere in the world. It is a Moscatel sherry — a variety rarely seen at this age — aged in a single enormous tonel (a large wooden vessel of several thousand litres) rather than the standard 600-litre bota. Only one hundred bottles are drawn from this single vessel each year, and they are released sporadically rather than annually, when Valdespino determines the wine is at the right moment.
The age is estimated at approximately one hundred years. The colour is a deep, dark amber-brown. The nose is extraordinary: aged muscatel grape, candied orange peel, beeswax, old resin, dark honey and a floral note — orange blossom — that, remarkably, has survived a century of ageing. The palate is sweet and intensely concentrated, with the aromatics of the Moscatel grape still just visible beneath layers of oxidative complexity. A wine that defies description, comparison and category. A genuine relic of nineteenth-century winemaking, still alive in a Jerez cellar.