Who makes it
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.
Where it grows
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.
How it is made
The 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.
What they make
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.
Wines to try
First bottle
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.