Wine of the week
Bill Bolloten starts out talking bull and ends up sipping a memorable aged fino.
La Honda Fino En Rama (Osborne)
D.O. Jerez
Variety: Palomino Fino (100%)
ABV: 16%
€26.00 (50 cl) from Bodeboca
Osborne, a historic bodega with its headquarters in the Cádiz town of El Puerto de Santa María, is probably best known for its iconic bull (el toro de Osborne). This black silhouetted image has been installed on hilltops and along roadways throughout much of Spain. Curiously, Huelva, where I live, is the only province in Andalusia without one.
Yet Osborne is no longer a big name in the sherry world, with production of many of its wines now being outsourced to other companies. The soleras of the renowned Fino Quinta, for example, were transferred to the current producer of this wine, González Byass.
But what Osborne does have are historic bodegas with notable soleras of very old wines, and we should be grateful for the treasures that they hold. La Honda, a legendary building in El Puerto, is where our wine of the week has its origin.
La Honda Fino En Rama is part of a small range of en rama sherries, including the complex Fino Coquinero and the exceptional La Honda Amontillado. En rama means ‘from the branch’, as in ‘fruit just picked from the tree’. These wines are usually bottled straight from the cask with minimal clarification and filtering.
The hand-harvested grapes were made, as is customary, into a base wine which was then fortified to 15.5% ABV before biological ageing for 12 years under flor in the solera and criaderas system. Over the years, the flor gradually begins to decay, allowing for some oxidative evolution to take place. In the process, natural evaporation concentrated this wine to its final 16 degrees of alcohol.
This is a long-aged fino with a singular personality. With its golden amber colour it is starting to resemble the amontillado it would have evolved into with further oxidative ageing.
The nose shows toasted almond, hay, dried fruit and salted caramel sweetness. The palate is full and intense, dry with a saline tang and a long, persistent finish suggesting citrus peel and sesame. Simply remarkable, and a wine to sip and relish slowly.
Some other long-aged finos to try are Fino Tradición from Bodegas Tradición, and La Panesa from Emilio Hidalgo.