Sherry is not easy to come by in this town, folks. (“Cherry? Yeah, we have cherry vodka.”) If you’re seeking Sherry (and you’re lucky), the liquor store person will lead you to a dusty shelf over by the jug wines, where approximately 95% of the fortified wines will be syrupy sweet and/or flavored.
Even my normally reliable Total Wine doesn’t have a great Sherry section. There will be a Cream Sherry or two from the national brands, and the rest will be one of Total Wine’s Winery Direct labels. (In the fortified category, these are usually re-branded export stock of varying quality.)
Don Benigno is in the latter category, a Winery Direct Sherry. I grabbed this bottle out of desperation because I had no Sherry in the house. But you know what? It’s far from terrible.
A viscous amber liquid pours from this bottle, offering up medium intensity and sweetness. The nose is entirely oxidative…and delicious. Candied apricot, toasted pecan, orange flower honey, yellow raisin, flan, toasted marshmallow, smooth vanilla extract and an aromatic, incense-like whiff of sandalwood.
The palate adds yeasty flor flavors and some salinity–caramel, sourdough, and salt merging to create the taste of a fresh-baked pretzel. Pleasantly bitter flavors of Brazil nuts and pecan, more yellow raisins, a resinous note like thin maple syrup, ending on “bouncy” flavors of Red Vines and bananas. My favorite aspect of this tasting was the juxtaposition of rich pastry-shop flavors with a saline edge–the sweet-and-salty combo registering as a grown-up version of Buttershots.
Don Benigno displays a lot more complexity than I expected from a Sherry at this price point–although everyone in our tasting group agreed the finish is rather short and it smells better than it tastes. It also lacks the fruity and fresh character that can set Amontillado apart from fully oxidized Sherry. It doesn’t, for instance, have the tantalizing orange citrus notes of the similar-in-style Sandeman Medium Amontillado that I bought at Christmastime.
My other gripe is that it’s sweeter than I like to drink. C’mon Total Wine, why don’t you have a single dry Amontillado or Oloroso Sherry in your 25,000 square foot store? Except for Tio Pepe (and the Total Wine knockoff of Tio Pepe, which are both Fino Sherries), every bottle there tastes like freakin’ dessert.
I see two problems with the dominance of Medium and Cream Sherries on the shelf. First, it does nothing to allay the misconception that Sherry is a cheap and cloying old wino drink, instead of one of the most nuanced and sophisticated wine styles in the world.
And second, sweetening Amontillado hampers its versatility in recipes. Sherry makes a great cocktail, sure–but it’s also an unsung hero in the kitchen. I love to use Sherry to deglaze pans and to season soups and sauces. I’ll splash it in French onion soup, mushroom bisque, sauteed shrimp, lo mein noodles, bread stuffing, and cream sauces. But a cooking Sherry has to be fairly dry, because many of the foods that it enhances the most–foods like autumn vegetables, shellfish, and dairy–already bring enough sweetness to the table.
Some online Sherry fans have noticed that the Don Benigno label has recently changed, and wonder if the Sherry inside is the same as always. Total Wine’s website still displays the old label, which looks like this:
The excellent Sherry Notes blog has the scoop on Amontillado’s labeling laws, and may offer a clue as to what’s going on.
So: Eagle eyes may notice that the old label says “Amontillado” and new label describes the contents as “Blend of Amontillado Sherry.” That tiny-font “Blend of” is important, because prior to 2012, Amontillado was being bottled in a range of styles from dry to medium-sweet. But not anymore.
It seems that Spain’s Consejo Regulador (the Sherry cabal) got serious about taxonomy and decided to clarify that true Amontillado is naturally dry and can’t be sweetened after fermentation/fortification. Amontillado is permitted to be used as a base for sweetened wines labeled “Medium Sherry,” “Medium Dry Sherry,” “Cream Sherry,” or “Blend of Amontillado.”
2012 was a long time ago–but Sherry has no vintage on the label and unopened bottles can last basically forever. So Total Wine may have been selling old stock since before the rules were changed.
But does Don Benigno taste the same as it used to? I mean, technically no. Sherry is drawn from a continuous aging system (the solera) that’s never emptied, is literally alive in many cases, and is always being replenished with new vintages of the Palomino base wine.
Just as a canceled Disney princess once taught me that you can’t step in the same river twice, a brand of Sherry won’t ever taste exactly the same across different batches. A skilled blender will be able to create a consistent product, but you can’t really buy the same bottle of Sherry twice. (In the case of this bottle…eh, that’s really okay.)
I realize I’m being rather harsh to pobre Don Benigno: This Sherry drinks fine, especially for under $15. And it won’t go to waste: Whenever I have a bottle of too-sweet Amontillado that I can’t use up in the kitchen, it makes a delicious after-dinner drink with Cava (or soda water) and lemon.
Bottle: Don Benigno (Blend of) Amontillado Sherry
Variety: Palomino
ABV: 17.5%
Suggested retail: $14.99
My rating: 7.2 (out of 10)
Review disclosure: I was not compensated or provided any free products for this review. Opinions expressed on The Wine Fairy blog are entirely my own.
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