Description
Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana, Palo Cortado “Wellington” VOS 20 Years
If your first instinct upon seeing a bottle of Palo Cortado Sherry is to enter “Palo Cortado Sherry” into the Google search field, you’re not alone: There are many categories of Sherry and lots of associated jargon to remember. But we’ll get to that in a minute. What I want to get across, more than anything else, is what a dry, versatile, and remarkably complex wine we have in Hidalgo’s “Wellington.”
When I taste this 20-year-old masterwork, which carries the Vinum Optimum Signatum, or “Very Old Sherry” (VOS) designation, the first thing I think of is food—as in, the myriad applications for this sumptuously savory wine at the dinner table. Because it’s a fortified wine, we’ve long treated Sherry more like a spirit than a wine, and while dry and sweet styles alike have enjoyed a new life as low-octane cocktail ingredients, there’s no way I’m mixing something as fascinating and delicious as “Wellington” with anything else. Would I pair it with everything from seafood stews to duck liver paté to cheese and chocolate? Absolutely. Would I sip it on its own, with a few slices of Iberico ham, as an apéritif? You bet I would. And would I marvel at the fact that one of the world’s rarest and most distinctive wine treasures can be had for just $45? I would, and I do—this is a wine experience like no other. No serious oenophile can afford to miss it.
There’s more: For the fastest-acting among you, we have a small stash of their 30-Year (it is far older than that) VORS bottling, available here. It is very rare and utterly mind-blowing!]
“Palo Cortado” means “cut stick,” a reference to the cross-like markings on barrels of wine destined to be crafted in that style. There are four main types of dry Sherry: Fino, Amontillado, Palo Cortado, and Oloroso. The first two age “biologically,” meaning they remain under a veil of yeast (flor) while they mature, while the latter two are aged “oxidatively,” meaning they lose their flor and take on characteristics not just from the barrels they age in but from the slow creep of oxygen between the barrel staves. Palo Cortado and Oloroso styles are a much richer amber color in comparison to the straw-colored Finos/Amontillados, as a result of the oxidative aging process.
VOS and VORS (Very Old Reserve Sherry) styles represent some of the most prized wines in any bodega’s collection, and are subject to strict regulations. Historically, they were reserved mostly for family consumption or for entertaining visitors, but, while still rare, they’ve become more commercially available. These exceptionally complex, long-lived fortified wines are enjoying a much-deserved renaissance, even if their intricacies are such that even experienced sommeliers need the occasional refresher course. “Wellington” is bone dry and crisp, yet it possesses fathomless depth and extraordinary length.
Grown in the white, chalk/limestone soils of southwestern Spain, in the province of Cádiz, Sherry—the English way of saying Jerez (herr-ez), or Xérès (sher-esh) in Arabic, the name of the region’s anchor town—originally became fortified as a means of surviving the long sea voyage to Great Britain. The Brits were shipping wines to the homeland from Jerez as early as the 14th century, and as in Porto, in northern Portugal, British merchants opened their own bodegas in and around Jerez. Hidalgo-La Gitana, however, founded in 1792 and now run by the eighth generation of the Hidalgo family, is one of the great homegrown estates. The family’s 170 hectares of estate vineyards are concentrated in the Balbaina and Miraflores subzones of the Sherry-Jerez-Xérès DO (Denomination of Origin), whose key towns are Jerez de la Frontera, El Puerto de Santa Maria, and Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Hidalgo’s cathedral-style winery sits just 300 meters from the Atlantic in Sanlúcar, and when you consider how long the wines spend aging in these buildings in casks, it’s no wonder one of their signature features—regardless of style—is an unmistakable salty, “sea-spray” note on the palate.
Lots of wine selected for Palo Cortado fortified to a higher level of a.b.v. (17.5% in Wellington’s case), which prevents the growth of flor and enables the wine to develop all the hallmarks of controlled oxidation, namely a deeper, more burnished color and lots of nutty, caramelized notes. In addition to aromas and flavors of toasted walnuts and butterscotch, look for notes of dried orange peel, salty air, dried apricot, caramel, sandalwood, smoke, leather, and so much more. The wine is dry and briskly refreshing, but there’s a breadth to the flavors that makes it feel full-bodied. It explodes across the palate before buttoning up on the salty, mouthwatering finish, lingering on the finish like the final reverberations of an epic rock song. Serve this at cellar temperature (55 degrees) in all-purpose white wine stems (you can use Sherry copitas if you have them, but I prefer a little more swirling room to release all the aromas). It’s hard to decide on just one pairing, but the nutty, toasty elements of this wine—combined with its searing acidity—will make it a perfect partner for fried seafood (as you might find in the tapas bars of Andalucia). This is a must-try!
