Spain · Jerez (Sherry)

Bodegas Cayetano del Pino & Cía SA

A Jerez specialist making only Amontillado and Palo Cortado since 1886, with wines aged up to 27 years through the traditional criaderas and soleras system.

The producer

Cayetano del Pino is a Sherry house in Jerez de la Frontera that has spent nearly 140 years making two wines and nothing else. No Fino, no sweet wine, no Oloroso. Every bottle in the range is either Amontillado or Palo Cortado, both aged through the traditional criaderas and soleras system from 100% Palomino Fino grown in the Marco de Jerez. That narrowness is a choice. Most Jerez producers work across the full spectrum of Sherry styles; Cayetano del Pino chose the two that sit in the middle of the oxidative spectrum, carrying a memory of their biological beginning in hazelnut, saline lift, and dried-fruit depth while continuing to age in American oak butts for up to 27 years.

The house was registered on 19 November 1886 by Cayetano del Pino y Vázquez, a native of La Carlota in Córdoba who had arrived in the Sherry trade as an independent extractor three years earlier, and his co-founder Manuel de la Calzada. Four wines make up the current range: Amontillado Solera and Amontillado VOS, Palo Cortado Solera and Palo Cortado VOS. The Palo Cortado Solera, averaging 18 years of age with only two under flor before 16 years of oxidative ageing, won a Decanter Platinum medal in 2017. The Palo Cortado VOS, averaging 27 years, won gold at the 2023 Concours Mondial de Bruxelles. The wines are bone-dry, savoury, and built for the table.

Known for

Palo Cortado and Amontillado generosos from 100% Palomino Fino, fractional-blended through traditional criaderas and soleras

Notable facts

The story

The cellars named for family

When Cayetano del Pino moved his growing house to calle Armas de Santiago 13 in 1890, he named the individual cellars after the people closest to him: San Vicente for his father and his son, San Bernabé for his wife Bernabea, Trinidad for his daughters. It was a private act of naming in a commercial space, the kind of thing a man does when he believes he is building something that will outlast him. In the first year at that address the house exported 521 botas of wine. By 1894 it was exporting 1,400. The cellars that bore his family's names were not a sentimental gesture but working spaces that quadrupled in output inside four years, and the names his wife and children carried were pressed into a trade expanding fast enough to matter.

From the atlas

Bodegas Cayetano del Pino & Cía SA

At A Glance

RegionMarco de Jerez, Andalusia, Spain
TownJerez de la Frontera
Founded1886
Grapes100% Palomino Fino
StylesAmontillado, Palo Cortado
AgeingCriaderas and soleras, 18 to 27 years average
Key BottlesPalo Cortado Solera, Palo Cortado VOS, Amontillado VOS

The Producer

Cayetano del Pino is a Sherry house in Jerez de la Frontera that has spent nearly 140 years making two wines and nothing else. No Fino. No sweet wine. No Oloroso. Every bottle in the range is either Amontillado or Palo Cortado, both aged through the traditional criaderas and soleras system, and both built from 100% Palomino Fino grown in the Marco de Jerez.

That narrowness is a choice, not a constraint. Most Jerez producers work across the full spectrum of Sherry styles. Cayetano del Pino chose the two styles that sit in the middle of the oxidative spectrum, the ones that carry a memory of their biological beginning in hazelnut, saline lift, and dried-fruit depth while ageing on for years in American oak butts. Four wines, two categories, one address: Plaza Silos 3 in the centre of Jerez.

Place

Jerez de la Frontera is the town behind Sherry's name, or rather its anglicised version of it. The Marco de Jerez, the protected zone for Sherry production, covers three principal towns: Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlucar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa Maria, each with its own microclimate. Jerez is the inland town, warmer and more sheltered than the coastal Sanlucar, and that warmth shapes the character of wines aged here.

The region's white grape, Palomino Fino, is a poor variety for table wine. It is low in acidity, low in sugar, and offers almost no aroma of its own in isolation. In the Marco de Jerez, that neutrality becomes an asset. Palomino's blank canvas takes on character entirely from how it is aged, and two possible ageing routes exist: biological, under a cap of flor yeast that protects the wine from oxygen, or oxidative, exposed to air through barrel ullage. Amontillado and Palo Cortado use both routes in sequence, which is why both styles carry more complexity than wines aged by one method alone.

Soil And Site

The Marco de Jerez sits on chalky albariza soils, the white, calcium-rich ground visible throughout the vineyards east and north of Jerez. Albariza absorbs winter rainfall and holds it through the dry Andalusian summer, releasing moisture slowly to the vines. This produces a long growing season with consistent Palomino ripeness even in dry years, and grapes that arrive at the bodega with the moderate alcohol and neutral flavour profile that the solera system requires. Cayetano del Pino's specific vineyard holdings are not published, but the house sources its Palomino from within the Marco de Jerez appellation.

Story

Cayetano del Pino y Vazquez came from La Carlota, a town in the province of Cordoba, not from Jerez. He arrived in the Sherry trade in 1883 as an independent extractor, buying and selling wine without a house of his own. A partnership with Alberto Romero, a businessman from Seville, ran for a year and dissolved in 1884. Del Pino spent two years working alone before finding the right partner.

On 19 November 1886, Cayetano del Pino y Vazquez and Manuel de la Calzada registered the firm Cayetano del Pino & C. as a wine exporting house. The first address was calle Rosario 16 in Jerez. By 1890 the operation had outgrown that space and moved to calle Armas de Santiago 13. The growth was rapid: from 521 botas exported in the first year at the new address to 1,400 botas by 1894, a quadrupling inside four years.

The house has stayed on a specialist course through multiple generations. Where other Jerez producers diversified into Fino, sweet wine, and brandy, Cayetano del Pino held to Amontillado and Palo Cortado. That decision is now 140 years old.

Vineyards And Cellar

The criaderas and soleras system is a method of fractional blending across a hierarchy of barrels. The solera is the oldest tier, sitting at floor level. Above it are the criaderas, ranks of barrels holding progressively younger wine. When wine is drawn from the solera for bottling, it is refreshed from the first criadera above. That criadera is in turn refreshed from the next, and so on up through the ranks until new wine enters at the top.

No barrel is ever emptied. Each draw takes only a fraction of the wine, so the oldest wine in the system is constantly diluted with younger material. The average age quoted on a Cayetano del Pino label is a weighted mean across the whole system, not the age of the oldest barrel.

For Amontillado Solera, that mean sits at 18 years, split between four years under flor and 14 years of oxidative ageing. For Palo Cortado Solera, the split is two years biological and 16 years oxidative, also totalling 18 years. The VOS wines, which carry the legal designation Vinum Optimum Signatum and require a minimum average age of 20 years, go further: 24 years for the Amontillado VOS and 27 years for the Palo Cortado VOS.

The biological phase, under flor, keeps the wine pale, saline, and protected from oxygen. When the flor dies or is fortified away, oxidative ageing begins. In Palo Cortado, this transition happens spontaneously instead of by choice, and the wine has the aromatic lift of Amontillado on the nose and the weight and depth of Oloroso on the palate.

Wines

The range is four wines across two styles, and the architecture follows a consistent logic: each style has a Solera expression and a VOS expression, the latter representing an additional six to nine years of fractional blending.

Amontillado Solera spends 18 years in the system, four of them under flor. It opens with the amber colour and hazelnut character that oxidative ageing produces, but retains saline, slightly yeasty undertones from its biological phase. The entry point for the range.

Amontillado VOS runs to 24 years average age. The additional years add concentration and depth, with more dried fruit character and a longer, richer finish than the Solera, while the dual-phase character remains legible in the glass.

Palo Cortado Solera averages 18 years, with only two under flor before 16 years of oxidative ageing. The lean biological phase leaves the wine with its saline, umami spine; the long oxidative ageing builds walnut, almond, and spice. Decanter awarded it a Platinum medal in 2017 and described it as bone-dry with savoury, umami, mushroominess, nuts, spice, and a lick of salinity. Sherrynotes records the nose as walnuts, almonds, toffee, and raisins, with a firm acid line and a lean, spiced palate.

Palo Cortado VOS goes to 27 years average age. The extended ageing intensifies everything: the nose becomes sharp and smoky with hazelnut, tobacco, and what the house calls noble woods from the biological phase, while the palate is velvety, warm, and dry with great persistence, hazelnut and wood notes, and a long licorice finish. A gold medal at the 2023 Concours Mondial de Bruxelles in Brussels followed.

In The Glass

Palo Cortado is the house's most distinctive expression, and the contrast between Solera and VOS is the clearest illustration of what the solera system does over time.

The Palo Cortado Solera rises from the glass with walnuts, almonds, a faint toffee note, and the savoury, slightly earthy character that long oxidative ageing builds. In the mouth it is lean and dry, with a firm acid line and a palate built around salinity, umami, and dried mushroom instead of fruit sweetness. Spice arrives mid-palate. The finish is long and savoury.

The Palo Cortado VOS opens sharper and more aromatic, the hazelnut and tobacco notes more pronounced, with a woody undertone that comes from 27 years of American oak contact. On the palate the texture shifts: velvety and warm, where the Solera is lean and mineral. Persistence is the word the house uses, and it is accurate. The licorice finish extends long after the wine is gone.

Amontillado, in both expressions, carries more visible memory of the biological phase: saline, slightly yeasty, with hazelnut and amber fruit alongside the oxidative depth. The Solera drinks lively. The VOS is richer and quieter at the same time.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with the Palo Cortado Solera. It is 18 years old on average, bone-dry, and built on the savoury, umami, mineral register that distinguishes Cayetano del Pino from sweeter or more glyceric interpretations of Palo Cortado. The nose is walnuts, almonds, and faint toffee. The palate is lean and long with salinity, dried mushroom, spice, and a finish that carries. Serve it cool, with cured meat, aged cheese, or nothing at all. The Decanter Platinum it won in 2017 reflects a specific style: austere by Sherry standards, precise, built for the table instead of occasional sipping. If that bottle convinces, the Palo Cortado VOS waits with nine more years of ageing and a texture that sits closer to velvet.

Anecdote

When Cayetano del Pino moved his growing house to calle Armas de Santiago 13 in 1890, he named the individual cellars after the people closest to him: San Vicente for his father and his son, San Bernabe for his wife Bernabea, Trinidad for his daughters. It was a private act of naming in a commercial space, the kind of thing a man does when he believes he is building something that will outlast him. In the first year at that address the house exported 521 botas of wine. By 1894 it was exporting 1,400. The cellars that bore his family's names were not a sentimental gesture but working spaces that quadrupled in output inside four years, and the names his wife and children carried were pressed into a trade expanding fast enough to matter.

Final Word

Cayetano del Pino occupies an unusual position in Jerez: a house that has held to two styles through nearly 140 years of market pressure, fashion cycles, and industry consolidation. The wines are bone-dry, savoury, and age-driven. They are not easy introductions to Sherry, but they are clear ones. The Palo Cortado range in particular, lean and mineral in the Solera, rich and persistent in the VOS, shows what the criaderas and soleras system produces when given time and left alone.

Sources

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