Those "infirmities" and their consequent annoyances ran through Poe's life until his death on October 7, 1849 after a six-day drinking bout in Baltimore. So, given his extended experience of alcohol, it is surely surprising that Poe's most celebrated tale involving wine, "The Cask of Amontillado", should display extraordinary ignorance.
"The Cask of Amontillado" was one of Poe's later tales, first published in November 1846. Montresor has endured a "thousand injuries" from his rival, Fortunato, and he takes revenge on him during "the supreme madness of the carnival season". Fortunato piques himself on his connoisseurship of wines, and Montresor (who was "skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could") uses this foible to entrap his enemy. Saying that he has bought a pipe of amontillado on which he would be grateful for Fortunato's opinion, Montresor takes him down into the cellars under his palazzo, manacles him to a prepared niche in their dankest, deepest part, and then bricks up the opening.
Several details of the story jar. Montresor's expertise in "the Italian vintages" would not dispose him towards amontillado, which is of course a Spanish wine. Fortunato's contemptuous dismissal of Luchesi, another connoisseur — "Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry" — is again troubling, since amontillado is a kind of sherry. On their way through the cellars, Montresor offers Fortunato a draught of Medoc to "defend us from the damps". A few moments later, Fortunato asks for more Medoc, and Montresor obliges by giving him a "flaçon of De Grâve". Graves is a Bordeaux wine, as is Medoc; but they are not the same.
These blunders do not of course detract from the power of Poe's tale — indeed, they point us towards its biographical sources. Poe was addicted to the narcotic effects of alcohol, and seems to have been indifferent to whichever vehicle it was that happened to deliver it. The dismally-misnamed Fortunato's tantalising situation at the end of the tale — imprisoned by a false friend in the midst of alcohol, none of which can be drunk — is a potent combination of the horrors Poe actually experienced, and of those he could only fearfully imagine.
