Equipo Navazos, La Bota 108 de Oloroso Bota NO, Jerez NV - 37.5cl

In a small bodega on Calle Olivo in Chiclana, twenty-five miles south of Jerez, Chano Aragón looks after a butt of oloroso that nobody is allowed to refill. Bota NO is the chalk mark on the cask itself: do not top up, do not touch. The wine inside is somewhere close to ninety years old. Equipo Navazos bottled a small part of it as La Bota 108.

Understand what that means before you pull the cork. Nine decades of oxidative ageing in a butt that has never been refreshed leaves behind almost nothing but concentrate. It is bone dry — there is no sugar in this at all, whatever a dark sherry may lead you to expect — and the acidity is startling. The dry extract is something you can practically chew.

Mahogany in the glass, turning green at the rim. The nose gives you almost no fruit: tobacco leaf, dark-roast coffee, old leather, walnut shell, a metallic note somewhere near brass. The palate arrives bitter and saline and simply keeps arriving, finishing minutes later drier than it started. This is not a comfortable wine. It is a great one.

A half bottle, and rightly so. You will be pouring it in thimbles.

How to Serve

13–14°C, cellar-cool rather than fridge-cold. Use a white wine glass, not a copita — it wants room. Once opened it will hold for weeks in the fridge. It has survived considerably worse.

Where to Drink It

Bar Lotus, among people who will want to talk about it. Noble Rot, which takes sherry as seriously as it deserves. Dandy at Maltby Street, late on.

Food Pairings

Jamón ibérico and marcona almonds, or a wedge of properly aged Manchego. Salt and fat are the only things that stand up to this much acid and bitterness. Keep chocolate well away from it.