Match of the week

Grilled artichoke and dry amontillado sherry

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on September 8 2025 at 12:31

I was so blown away by the food at Nieves Barragan’s new restaurant Legado last week that the wine almost played a bit part but the sherry we were offered with the main, or rather middle, courses - it being a classic Spanish small plates restaurant - was spot on.

One of the standout dishes was grilled artichoke with almond sauce. I regularly pair artichokes with fino sherry but the Lustau Amontillado del Castillo from their Almacenista range which the wine manager Marcos Rapado Segurado brought to the table was even better with this dish, contributing a nutty richness to the pairing

It also, perhaps more predictably, went with the fall-apart-tender pork belly and greens. Maybe you’d have reached red wine stage by this point but from a purely flavour point of view amontillado is just as good a match and works perfectly in a small plates context.

At at £36 for 50cl (at Berry Bros & Rudd) that particular sherry is at the top end pricewise but you could easily buy a dry amontillado sherry for less. Waitrose has a full size bottle in its no 1 range, also made by Lustau, for £14.25, for instance, which is a terrific buy and would do the job with these kind of dishes too.

For qualité prix as the French call it, you can’t beat sherry.

For a deeper dive into amontillado sherry pairings see this post or buy my sherry ebook 101 Great Ways to Enjoy Sherry.

I ate at Legado as a guest of the restaurant

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