Jesús Barquín: Deep mahogany, with greenish hues. The nose is tight, but somewhere in the background seem to rest all the aromas that ever existed. Extremely old and concentrated. The palate is sharp as a knife—in fact, this sharpness is all that remains of its biological aging, together with the absence of any VA. Powerful, impressive, colossal, poignant, uncompromising. 19.5

Andrew Jefford: Deep walnut in color: another of those Oloroso-like Amontillados. As with some of the other wines of that sort, this also has what is (for me) a drearily casky, hessian aroma, like smelling essence of bodega but with the vineyard squeezed out. Then… Whack! Crikey! Strewth! It’s hugely intense, I mean, so intense that it puts all the other “intense” references into the shade; it powers on to the tongue, and drills down into it, and flares of apricot flames and peach gases and out comes a salty seeping mass of flavor that is more the taste of time itself than anything else. Respect: It’s awesome. But the aromas honestly lack freshness and lift, and it all ends up in the bitter zone where wine and medicine meet. I feel that it is probably a better blending component now than sipping substance—except if you want to gauge the extent of the changes that time can bring to wine in cask. Hard to score, obviously. 16.5

Richard Mayson: Mid-deep amber, with an olive green rim; pungent and aromatic, with power and almost balsamic concentration evident on the nose; similarly powerful on the palate, a black hole of concentration and intensity suggesting that this is a very old wine, slight casky/rancio character on the finish adds to the overall complexity. This leaves me with a sense of wonder (and respect), so… 19