The President of the Secret Sherry Society is pleased to present this week’s author on “Sherry Blogger of the Week,” Dr. Michael Lim of The Travelling Gourmet.
An internationally renowned Travel, Food & Wine Writer/Chef, Dr. Lim has traveled the world in a relentless search for good food and winsome wines. Trained by top 3 Michelin Star Chefs, LeNotre Culinary School in Paris & CIA (Culinary Institute of America), he is also a parachutist, fencer, SCUBA diver & big game hunter.
Each week we will feature a new wine blogger committed to sharing with readers their passion and knowledge of wine. If you are a wine blogger and are interested in being featured on our website please email us at secretsherrysociety@gmail.com.
Stupendous Sherry!
The intrepid Travelling Gourmet tells you about Spain’s gift to the world…
By Dr. Michael Lim, The Travelling Gourmet
My fondest memories of Sherry are from when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England. Every time you visited your friends or Professors socially, they would offer you a nice glass of Sherry. Inevitably, it was Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Then you would sit by the blazing fire in the living room and chat. At Christmas time, Sherry was the tipple to go with beloved Christmas Plum Pudding Flambe served with lashing of Rum Butter or Brandy Butter. OMG! It was super yummy! And who can resist that classic English dessert…Sherry Trifle with jelly, strawberries and custard! Made with Lady Finger sponge biscuits soaked in…lots of (what else?) Sherry!
Sherry actually comes from the Moorish language – “Seris”. In Spanish, Sherry is Jerez which is also the name of the Spanish town which is the center for Sherry production.
A typical sherry has a nose of blue steel like that of my favourite H&K USP 9mm pistol, light amber in colour, bone dry in the mouth, it is so powerful your first taste may be a shock to your taste buds…
John Harvey & Sons was founded in 1796 in Bristol and Harvey’s Bristol Cream has become the world’s best selling Sherry. How “Cream” became a part of this famous label is the stuff of legend. In the 1860s Harvey’s already had a popular blend called Harvey’s Bristol Milk. When an aristrocratic lady visited the cellars and tasted a new blend, she promptly declared: ”If that be the milk, then this is cream!” Made exclusively from Palomino fruit from their own Spanish vineyards in Jerez Superior appellation, it is a blend of four wines. They are Amontillado, Fino, Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez from more than 50 different Soleras with an average age of 8 years on bottling. Heady caramel and raisin aromas entice with a palate of dried fruit and nuts plus a lingering voluptuous finish…like the kiss of a ravishing woman. The cobalt blue bottle has been a distinctive feature since 1990.
Sherry’s Humble Beginning
Dry Sherry or Fino Sherry accounts for 95% of Sherry production. From a simple white wine crafted from the Palomino grape grown in this arid region of southern Spain, it is fermented till there is NO residual sugar. American oak casks are filled till five-sixths of the way and left partly covered.
Some, not all of the barrels develop a layer like cream cheese. Called Flor, it comprises Saccharomyces yeast and shields the wine from oxidation. The wine is lightly fortified and will be used to make Fino.
More alcohol is added to barrels without Flor. The wine oxidizes and they become Olorosos.
Solera aging
This is very complicated, which is why there are Almacenistas who are specialists in this art. In a nutshell, a part of the younger wine is added to an older barrel. From the older barrel, a part is added an even older one, and so on…A 100 barrels or more can make up a Solera! They are carefully arranged in a pyramid with the oldest at the bottom. Simply put, it is a precise form of fractional blending
Make mine a Fino…
Finos from Jerez, where the hot summer burns off the Flor, are heartier. while those made In Sanlucar, the milder weather is conducive to growing Flor all year-round and they are more delicate. The latter are known as manzanilla, perhaps because have nuances of chamomile tea which bears the same name. An example of ‘terroir’ or the taste of the place.
These wines are pale, light…to be enjoyed young. Chill before drinking for the best taste. On the contrary, having taken on unique flavors from the flor, Finos are very popular due to the collection of unique and complex flavours from the Flor. It is like caviar and foie gras an acquired taste, not for the hoi polloi.
Fino is generally young, about five years old. Age it to obtain Fino Amontillado. It begins to take on oxidative characteristics as the Flor disappears. Almonds and hazelnuts, toffee notes and a deeper colour. In the Soleras the younger more vibrant & expressive wines are foiled by the older, more complex wines.
OMG! Oloroso
Olorosos are older…richer and more costly but worth it if you are partial to such flavours and complexity. Oloroso means “fragrant” in Spanish. Sweet Amontillados and Olorosos are lovely with Crème Brulee, aged cheese and of course, a perfect match for Ye Olde English Sherry Trifle. Sweet Harveys Pedro Ximenez VORS Sherry explodes on your palate with voluptuous flavours of figs and Arabian dates. A dash of sherry also brings out the flavour of Lobster Bisque.
Say cheers to suprising Sherry…Salud!
The Travelling Gourmet’s SAS (smooth as silk) Sherry Trifle
A ravishing English lady taught me this recipe…
Ingredients
- Big clear glass bowl for the Trifle
- 1 packet of Lady Finger sponge biscuits
- Fresh Strawberries.
- Fresh Raspberries
- Chocolate curls
- ½ cup Orange Juice
- Strawberry Jelly
- Pedro Ximenez Sherry
- Sliced almonds
- Custard or Crème Anglais.
Method
Place the Lady Finger sponge biscuits to line the bottom of the bowl.Then pour on orange juice and sherry to taste ( 5 tablespoons). The sponge will soak up the juices and sherry.
Add in the fresh strawberries. Make some strawberry jelly and pour carefully in. You can add strawberry jam to the jelly for more texture. Let it set in the refrigerator.
Before serving, make the custard, let it cool and pour it on top of the set jelly. Chill in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Garnish with fresh strawberries, raspberries, chocolate curls and serve immediately. Enjoy!
On Valentine’s Day, make a heart on top of the custard with strawberries, raspberries &cherries. Michelangelo always said: Trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle!
The President of the Secret Sherry Society is pleased to present this week’s author on “Sherry Blogger of the Week,” Tim Vandergrift from WineExpert.
Each week we will feature a new wine blogger committed to sharing with readers their passion and knowledge of wine. If you are a wine blogger and are interested in being featured on our website please email us at secretsherrysociety@gmail.com.
Tim’s Take on Sherry
By Tim Vandergrift
I am perhaps the least likely Sherry enthusiast you could imagine. Born in a very small town in western Canada, I didn’t grow up drinking wine. Indeed, the only wine available in our community was screw-topped, vaguely soda-poppish, and heavy on the sugar and bubbles, but light on actual wine content. If this was wine, include me out.
Another influence was my family’s ethnic and religious background: on my mother’s side I come from a long line of Russian-Germans, observant of the Mennonite faith. If you’re not familiar with the sect, think ‘Amish’, but not so friendly towards outsiders, or as open to new ideas. While long on community, family and church, they disapproved of beverage alcohol on general principles: alcohol beverages were not drunk to appreciate the subtle flavours and aromas. They were drunk stealthily, behind the barn, for the purposes of sneaking into the pool hall to lose the grocery money among loose women. These attitudes coloured how I felt about drinking as a lad. I grew up wanting to be like my old man, drinking beer from cans or Rye whisky mixed with cola, smoking unfiltered cigarettes taken from a pack tucked into the sleeve of my hoodlum-grade t-shirt.
And so it went, until I met the woman who would be my future wife. She came from a robustly mixed family, including French Canadian influences. They would no more sit down to dinner without wine on the table than they would sit down without cutlery or plates.
Under her influence I not only started to drink wine, I began to realize that I’d had it wrong all along—not only was wine delicious, it was more complex and challenging than mass-market beer or whiskey. I understood I’d been denied a birthright and vowed to make up for it. I drank richly fruity red wines at first, and gradually sought out stronger, more heavily extracted wines to drink, with more tannin, more oak and more alcohol. Pretty soon if it wasn’t California Zinfandel or Australian Shiraz, it wasn’t coming to my table. Certainly white wines were out, and dessert wines were neither dessert nor wine to me. And sherry? Well, I tried it once and it was thick, sticky and tooth-spinningly sweet. I thought it fit for waffles, or for reviving diabetics, but not for real men.
In a way, I was as closed to the possibility of wines as I was before, allowing only the narrowest interpretation of wine to define the whole world of the grape for me. I may have continued on like this for a long time, but for the generosity and wisdom of strangers.
I was on a solo cycling trip through the Gulf Islands of British Columbia in 1989, riding up and down winding hilly roads, soaking in some of the most breathtaking scenery in the world—cool green forests, shingle beaches, deep blue stretches of the Pacific, dotted with boats and killer whales and endless blue skies. I camped a bit, but whenever I got thoroughly dusty and saddle-sore I stopped at bed and breakfast places and basked in the sun and loaded back up on carbohydrates.
On one of the islands I was lucky enough to get in at a very eclectic bed and breakfast. The owner was a feral chef who cooked according to a complicated dedication to an arcane notion of historical authenticity, preparing ancient Roman meals that were so authentic that they didn’t include any ingredients not known to the time of Julius Caesar, or Medieval meals that included four-and-twenty blackbirds baked into a pie (I kid you not).
This might sound like a recipe for disaster, but on the contrary, the food was good, if a little odd, but it was continually engaging, in a way I hadn’t seen before. He had thought deeply what it meant to be both a cook and an eater from that time period, and wanted you to think about it too.
But the challenges of his meals aside, the hospitality was warm and open, and at about 4 pm every day drinks were served on the deck, which overlooked a gorgeous stretch of forest running down to the bay. By that time the stinging heat of the afternoon had moderated by the cool, salt-scented breezes from the Strait of Georgia, bringing with them hints of cedar, pine needles, red earth and clover, and the hummingbirds were actively zipping around the heads of guests, darting in an out of the cascades of flowers surrounding the space.
I had settled in to enjoy the view, feet up and perfectly content, feeling like I could have sat there for several years if the opportunity presented itself, when one of the staff came up with a tray and presented me with a small plate and a narrow tulip glass of white wine lightly beaded with moisture in the heat of the afternoon.
“Compliments of the house. Today we have a little tapas for you: almonds, house-cured olives Manchego cheese, and to go with it, a glass of Sherry.”
I had been with her right up until the Sherry, but it would be the work of a complete churl to refuse such a thoughtful offering. Besides, I could grit my teeth through a wee glass of pancake syrup to go with the tasty-looking snacks.
I picked up the glass and gave it an exploratory sniff. There was no caramel, no raisins, no burned sugar. Instead, I smelled sea breezes, a hint of nuts, like the ghost of particularly good hazelnuts, minerals and sunshine. Somehow through all the other smells of the forest and the flowers I could physically smell hot, sun baked earth full of chalk and gypsum and good red dirt, and something else I could not put my finger on. Suddenly my mouth watered—it smelled fantastic. Not fantastic in the sense of very good indeed, but fantastic in the sense that it seemed to have sprung from a very good imagination, one that could make up wine that had aromas worthy of a mystery novel.
I took a tentative sip. It was lightly chilled, but not ice-cold, and the first thing that hit me was the nuttiness. It was delicate and shy, but very persistent. It startled me that a wine could have an up-front flavour that didn’t rely on fruitiness! As that first sip flowed across my palate the acidity caught up almost immediately: this wine was crisp, but not actually tart, and immensely refreshing.
The flavours that came next left me dumbfounded. I already realised I was going to have to re-evaluate my ideas about Sherry, but the wine gave up wonderful minerality. Although it was pleasingly fruity, with citrusy notes and hints of stone fruit, there were cascades of carbonates and gypsum, making it seem drier than the beautifully balanced wine it really was. And despite the delicacy of the flavours and the layers they formed, it was an incredibly robust wine, powerful and punchy.
It was almost absent-mindedly that I popped a couple of almonds in my mouth. They were still warm, crisped from the oven and dusted with a bit of sea salt. Paired with the Sherry they formed an amazing combination. The sweetness of the almond, its nuttiness and the bit of saltiness picked up everything that was so, so right with the wine. Right up until that moment I would never have believed that almonds were the perfect food to match with any wine. The cheese and the olives were revelations as well, their powerful, savoury flavours chased, wrestled, subverted and uplifted by this beguiling wine.
I found I had reached the bottom of my glass in less than a dozen minutes. Looking around somewhat embarrassed by my greedy gulping, I saw the owner approaching with the bottle. “Can you tell me what kind of Sherry this is?” I asked, hoping for a brand name so I could pick some up on my return home.
He smiled broadly and filled my glass again. “It’s my favourite Sherry of all, Palo Cortado. It’s not a very popular style around these parts, so I have to bring it in especially for myself and my guests. I’m very glad you’re enjoying it.” In examining the bottle I realised that Palo Cortado wasn’t a brand at all, but a style of Sherry, one I was obviously going to have to learn more about.
When I had time to look it up in my wine books at home, I found out that Palo Cortado was quite rare—no wonder he had to import it himself. I learned that Sherry is made from carefully aged white wines stored and blended in a complex system of casks. There are two ways the aging, a biological process where special yeast form a crust on top of the wine in a barrel, transforming the contents over time. The other process is chemical, where the wine oxidises away until it reaches the brown richness of sweeter Sherries. Palo Cortado is made with a combination of both, and strangely enough, it’s almost always by accident: the winemaker starts off to make a normal Sherry under the flor yeast, which (for mysterious reasons) collapses, leaving the sherry to enrich and darken in colour on its own. Accident or not, it was a happy circumstance that made such wonderful wine.
I left for home the next day, and that afternoon of tapas and sherry on the deck is a timeless memory for me, a nearly perfect idyll matched by a whole new world of wine opening to me.
The bed and breakfast is gone now, all these years later, but I’ll always have fond and grateful memories of it, and the lessons I learned. First, I shouldn’t judge a wine by a single example—maybe if I didn’t like a particular wine it wasn’t because it was bad, but rather that I simply hadn’t tried enough to form a proper opinion. Second, some wines had flavours and aromas that didn’t rely on the brute-force approach of ripe fruit, tannin and oak to be delicious and complex, but rather showed delicacy, finesse and refinement—a powerful character in it’s own right.
And now I’ve got a bottle of Palo Cortado waiting in my wine rack—next to a couple of Finos, an Amontillado and a wee bottle of Pedro Ximinez. It seems I’m a convert.
The President of the Secret Sherry Society is pleased to present this week’s author on “Sherry Blogger of the Week,” Tom Firth from WineAccess . You can also follow Vicky on Twitter @cowtownwine.
Each week we will feature a new wine blogger committed to sharing with readers their passion and knowledge of wine. If you are a wine blogger and are interested in being featured on our website please email us at secretsherrysociety@gmail.com.
Sherry, The Forgotten Elixir
By Tom Firth
I love sherry and I don’t really care if you love it.
This might seem like an outrage to the average sherry enthusiast, but I am tired of trying and I don’t want to spend anymore of my time trying convert people to a wine that they are never going to drink.
Sherry (and the wines of Montilla-Moriles) has had a rough 50 years. Its last heyday was before the birth of most current sherry drinkers and it stands as a largely forgotten, yet mainstream, wine. Cheap and overly sweet imitations, along with the stigma of drinking what might have been your grandmother’s tipple, has all but removed the wine from the common man or woman’s drinking repertoire.
I have been a fan of sherry since my first year in the wine business, almost 16 years ago. After completing university, my first order of business was a wine trip to Spain and Portugal to taste their fortified wines. After 5 years of school, working in the wine business, I could think of no better way to give myself a reward for my hard work that that. From drinking vino tinto in white coffee mugs in Pinhão for a lone Euro (still one of my favourite wine experiences) served by a poor fellow working out of a converted aging cask, to touring bodegas in Cordoba in the scorching hot Andalucían summer.
From a delicate fino, to a sublime manzanilla, to the sweetest PX, I am always game to sit down, have a glass, and discuss the fortified wines of Spain until the wee hours. But despite my best efforts, I have yet to covert anyone who wasn’t already a fan of sherry or an open-minded wine nerd. I’ve led sherry classes and fortified wine seminars, but I’ve never seen that eureka moment in which the attendee says, ”This is the wine for me. We are going to drink fino all summer until we pass out, barf, or the snow flies — whichever comes first.”
And I don’t care anymore.
Sure, there is a market for sweet and dessert sherries, sherry-based cocktails and whisky finished in sherry cask.. Depending on who you ask, in some ways the market for sherry finished whiskies and its need for those barrels used in sherry production has helped keep the market for the wines of alive.
The dessert wine market is a big and lucrative, but fickle. Virtually every wine producing region has its own version of a sticky wine, but they move in and out of fashion almost too fast to be counted. Sherry is the best match for most dessert tarts, but desserts change and sherry cannot capture the imagination of enough diners to become a permanent or prominent addition to the average wine list.
Will it ever become the regular tipple of the thirsty masses in North America?
More countries should agree to protect the term “sherry” and stop producing their own misleading and often inferior versions of the wine. Sherry does not come from Canada, the United States, Australia, or anywhere outside of Spain. Although I do count the wines of Montilla-Moriles when I talk about the wines of Jerez.
Nothing is more refreshing on a hot summer day than a glass of fino. Sitting on a patio on a hot July afternoon in Andalusia and having a glass (or six) of sherry can’t be beat. A dry sherry is a wine that always tastes better outside.
A few years ago, Wine Access launched a competition for wines available in the Canadian market for less than $25 on a retail wine shelf. The wines are judges blind by independent and objective wine experts from across Canada.
Two years ago, sherries began to win Judge’s Choice awards and appear on our “Killer Values” list of the best wines under $15. The judges were thrilled; we (being the wine nerds we are) all love to see a great wine region receive recognition and the importers of those wines saw a modest rise in sales. We know that consumers are interested in trying new wines, but I just don’t know if sherry will keep their interest.
I love to “geek out” about sherry with like-minded individuals, but you will never see me emerge from my cellar with a bottle of sherry hidden behind my back, uttering the words, “I’ve got something you have to try.” I just don’t think that it’s worth the effort.
Unless you are a wine nerd, then we can talk…and I’ll bring the wine.
Originally posted on WineAccess
The President of the Secret Sherry Society is pleased to present this week’s author on “Sherry Blogger of the Week,” Jim White of NAPAMAN. Each week we will feature a new wine blogger committed to sharing with readers their passion and knowledge of wine. If you are a wine blogger and are interested in being featured on our website please email us at secretsherrysociety@gmail.com.
By Jim White
The international writing assignment breezed into my inbox: “Give us an original story about a white wine, which goes with seafood.”
I gave myself an even greater challenge: Find a white wine other than Champagne (way too predictable), which complements most seafood dishes.
Taking the Indiana Jones approach, I grabbed my brimmed, soft fedora and a corkscrew (who needs a bullwhip these days?) and hit the road to find such a wine.
Spanish bullring
Now that I am in the southern crescent of Spain, called Andalusia, where there are, in fact, bullrings, and bullfights, perhaps I should have brought along my bullwhip after all.
After an exhaustive parade through numerous bodegas (wineries) here, I have good news: I have found a single white wine, which complements just about every seafood dish imaginable.
In a word: Sherry.
I am referring particularly to the palest, most delicate, most ubiquitous, and least expensive type of Sherry – Fino. Proof that you don’t have to spend top dollar to experience Liquid Poetry.
Pedro Domecq is a well-known bodega in Jerez
Though not sparkling, Sherry is like Champagne in one respect: it is an ideal white wine to marry to all sorts of shellfish and seafood dishes. It’s great with oysters on the half-shell, great with grilled sea bass, great with a peppery seafood stew.
Unlike Champagne, Sherry is slightly fortified. Even so, it still qualifies as “wine.”
A stained glass window, a tribute to Spanish winemaking
Sherry is always served well chilled, and by “well,” I mean extremely well, much colder than you would serve Champagne or other white wine. That’s the way the folks who make it in Spain serve it in Spain. They should know.
Jerez (pronounced “Heh-reth” by the lisp-endeared Spanish), is the Sherry capital of the world. I have just spent five days here, interviewing Sherry producers.
The Sherry industry association, which sets standards with respect to grapes, harvesting, production, bottling, branding, and what constitutes DOC (Denominations of Origin) Sherry, is the oldest wine trade group in all of Spain. The Consejo Regulador was established in 1933.
César Saldaña, director general, of the regional Consejo, invited us to his association’s headquarters in Jerez to explain the complicated way Sherry is made – using the solera system.
Phoenicians brought grapes to this region more than 3,100 years ago and even during the 500-year Muslim conquest of the area (700 to 1400 AD), wine, Sherry by name, was continually produced here. In fact, “Jerez” is a transliteration of what the ancient Moors (Muslims) called the city – Sherish.
When the Moors ruled Spain, they built architectural wonders, like the Alhambra, in Granada, pictured here
Sherry has changed styles over the centuries, as you might expect. The beverage we know as “Sherry” started being fortified in the mid-1700s, as exports ramped up; traders
sought wines for long sailing expeditions. They discovered that fortifying a wine with additional grape spirits kept the wine from spoiling.
Today, only three grapes are permitted to make Sherry: Palomino, Moscatel, or Pedro Ximenes, which sounds more like the name of a Spanish TV comedian than a grape. All three are white grapes.
César Saldaña, director general of the Consejo Regulador
The chalky soil in this region is rich in limestone and calcium carbonate, which helps preserve what little moisture there is; vines of the three DOC permitted grape varieties, are forced to send roots deep into this cruel soil to reach the moisture. Scorching summer days produce grapes filled with high sugar content.
It takes clever winemakers to tame the fruit, grooming it into something palatable and delicious.
The grapes are pressed, fermented and the best lots are aged in American oak barrels where fermentation produces a particular “flora,” or micro-culture of yeasts, which transforms the liquid into a beverage with delicate, attractive, and nutty nuances.
A component of winemaking that is unique to this region is the maturation process. Every Sherry must spend a minimum of three years ageing in the solera system.
“The solera system” is not to be confused with “the solar system,” though it is possible to make comparisons; both are wonders of nature… and you can’t explain either on a single typed page.
In Jerez, soleras are everywhere. This one is at Gonzalez Byass. The crest on each barrel head represents one of the countries in which GB Sherries are sold
Here’s the Solera System for Dummies version: Sherry producers age their wine in a series of tiered barrels, mounted three, four or five rows high. The upper tiers are called criaderas (nurseries) because they hold the youngest wine.
Each harvest, when new wine is made, it replaces the wine in the top-tier barrels. But first, the wine previously held for a year in this top row of barrels is transferred to the row of barrels just below… whose wine has been transferred to the wine in the barrels immediately below… and so on, down to the ground level.
In this fashion, the wine on the bottom row, which has been housed the longest in this tiered apartment house of barrels, is now ready for blending, fortifying and bottling. Solera, by the way, comes from the Spanish word for floor, or suelo.
It takes at least three years to make a Fino Sherry, as the wine drops down in successive years, from barrel row to barrel row, eventually hitting the ground tier.
In effect, a three-year-aged Sherry has a little bit of wine from each of three successive vintages. This helps winemakers produce Sherries of consistent color, taste and texture.
Please don’t start singing Man of La Mancha
The aged wine from the ground level of barrels is blended and fortified with distilled spirits. (You can technically call these spirits “Brandy,” as many textbooks do, but the term, to me anyway, suggests a spirit from France; the fact is that the distilled alcohol used to fortify Sherry mostly comes from grapes grown near La Mancha.)
Enough technical detail! This is not meant to be a primer on Sherry but is meant to introduce you to the wonderment of this beverage and the pleasures it can bring to the table.
I have visited numerous bodegas in Jerez and haven’t found a single Sherry I didn’t like. But irony of ironies, my favorite Sherry, Tio Pepe, is produced by the oldest and largest bodega here, Gonzalez Byass.
Gonzalez Byass
Gonzalez Byass offers the closest thing to a Robert Mondavi Winery experience. Like Mondavi, GB was an original, game-changing winery in its homeland, though Gonzalez Byass had nearly a century’s head start on Bob Mondavi.
As at Mondavi, Gonzalez Byass offers the region’s premier educational tour. To see grapes growing in Jerez and learn how Sherry is made, book the Premier Tour.
My impressions of GB Sherries were heightened by two events: an intimate, first-class Sherry tasting led by the industry’s most respected senior taster/blender, Antonio Flores Pedregosa.
Table set in the cellar of ageing Sherries, at Gonzalez Byass
This was followed by a catered dinner in the Gonzalez Byass cellar, stacked high with many solera rows of ageing Sherry.
It also helped to sit at the multi-course, catered dinner with a director of the family-owned winery, getting his insider’s industry stories. Let’s be honest: Journalism may pay poorly, but it sure has its perks.
My take-away from Jerez is that Sherry, whether it’s the Tio Pepe, Fernando & Castilla, or Lustau brand, is a beverage of unique complexity and flavor.
Types of Sherries
Fino Sherry is the type I recommend to accompany seafood dishes. The pale gold wine has a taste of blanched almonds, fresh yeasty dough and the scent of pleasant herbs. Fino Sherry is an ideal complement to seafood, olives, or cured Iberian ham (or prosciutto – let’s not get too precious with the pairings!).
Manzanilla Sherry has a more prominent floral characteristic with hints of chamomile but it, too, would nicely complement many seafood dishes.
Amontillado Sherry is the result of blending two different types of Sherry (one produced “biologically,” one produced “oxidatively” – let’s not go into these distinctions here). Amontillado tends toward amber in color, and exhibits aromas of hazelnuts and tobacco. It is a great stand-alone aperitif and complements cheeses wonderfully. But I’m not thinking it goes so well with seafood.
Olorosso Sherry ranges from rich amber to deep mahogany in color. It is a warm, rounded, walnutty scented Sherry with sweet-ish top notes and flavors of toast, wood, and tobacco. Great with cured, or grilled, meats, but not a friend of seameats.
Pedro Ximenes is like treacle. Made from the “PX” grape, as locals call it, this Sherry sets the bar for sweet wine. Raisins, figs and dates jump to mind; the most recognizable scents are of honey, grape syrup and candied fruit. If 100 were the most sugary sweetness one could cram into a beverage, PX would rate 110 on the scale.
What is confusing to American consumers is that ALL these different styles of beverage are called Sherry. In the US, when we call a wine Cabernet Sauvignon, we kind of know what we’re getting into. Yes there may be bell pepper notes, or hints of blueberry, or the wine may be tannic, or oaky, but there is a bulls-eye, or target, of flavors, which define “Cabernet.”
Sherry, by contrast, is all over the place in colors, levels of sweetness, complexity of flavor and even in the process to make it – “would monsieur like a ‘biologically’ produced Sherry or one ‘oxidatively’ developed…?”
In a world of short attention spans, having to go to school to learn about the confusing, complex and arcane methods of production to enjoy and understand the beverage is not going to win Sherry producers many Facebook fans.
The take-away from this story is: Fino Sherry is a wonderful beverage to complement most seafood recipes.
As noted, my favorite Fino is Tio Pepe (which means “Uncle Jack” – named after a helpful uncle of the original owner of Gonzalez Byass). It is delicate, nuanced and complements many Mediterranean-style dishes, not just seafood. It is available in most US markets and, best of all, is not expensive. Which makes it one of those win-win-win beverages, proving that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to drink good wine.
A potential encore benefit: Sherry may be good for your health, though no one makes such a claim on a bottle. Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, scrawled this on the end of a barrel of Sherry, ageing in the cellar of one Jerez bodega:
If penicillin cures the sick, then Sherry resuscitates the dead.
Amen.
Another thing to like about Sherry; an opened bottle will keep for a month, or longer, if recorked and stored in the fridge.
If we have company to our home and serve prosciutto with chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano as an appetizer, I often pull a previously opened bottle of Tio Pepe from the fridge. Each time, the Sherry remains bright, friendly and complementary to these foods. Thanks, Uncle Jack!
