Amontillado Sherry
Posted: 21:16 Tue 18 Oct 2022
Work takes me, at the last minute, on a long-distance train. The only shop offering wine near the station is an M&S. The only Port is the M&S Ruby Port in its clear glass “decanter”. I’ve drunk this a bit before. It is fine but not very appealing to me. I therefore look for other options. The only table wines I would like are in corked bottles and, somehow during COVID, I managed to lose my keyring corkscrew. None of them look pretty inspiring in any event. So, sherry it is. The choices are the Cream Sherry or the Amontillado Medium Dry Sherry, produced by Williams & Humbert. The former sounds horrendous, so I go for the latter.
The colour is pleasing: a deep amber. The nose is probably fine, although a plastic cup may not be the optimal vessel for tasting it. The mouth is curious. On the one hand, I can sense some nice, aged sherry with a hint of hazelnuts. Not very complex but not unattractive. On the other, the sweetness of this Amontillado is incredible. I presume they have added grape must to it and there is that direct sweet flavour one might expect from drinking, well, grape-juice. The sensation is, I suppose, a bit like a Pineau des Charentes (a French drink that I quite like made by mixing grape juice and Cognac).
Trying to be objective: this is not great wine. However, it is an acceptable alcopop. There is nothing unpleasant about it, as one sometimes gets with super cheap Ports (e.g. too much spirit or not enough acidity to balance the sweetness). I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be economical to make this (it was c£9 a bottle) but then, I also think it shouldn’t make any commercial sense to blend the Amontillado base wines with so much sugary must.
Am I please with buying it? Yes. Has it given me more pleasure than some M&S screwtop table-wine? Yes. Would I buy it again? Almost certainly not. Probably the Ruby in a decanter next time...
The colour is pleasing: a deep amber. The nose is probably fine, although a plastic cup may not be the optimal vessel for tasting it. The mouth is curious. On the one hand, I can sense some nice, aged sherry with a hint of hazelnuts. Not very complex but not unattractive. On the other, the sweetness of this Amontillado is incredible. I presume they have added grape must to it and there is that direct sweet flavour one might expect from drinking, well, grape-juice. The sensation is, I suppose, a bit like a Pineau des Charentes (a French drink that I quite like made by mixing grape juice and Cognac).
Trying to be objective: this is not great wine. However, it is an acceptable alcopop. There is nothing unpleasant about it, as one sometimes gets with super cheap Ports (e.g. too much spirit or not enough acidity to balance the sweetness). I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be economical to make this (it was c£9 a bottle) but then, I also think it shouldn’t make any commercial sense to blend the Amontillado base wines with so much sugary must.
Am I please with buying it? Yes. Has it given me more pleasure than some M&S screwtop table-wine? Yes. Would I buy it again? Almost certainly not. Probably the Ruby in a decanter next time...