THE place to experiment with sherry is probably in a restaurant like Brindisa, Barrfina or Iberica. There are different styles and nuances. Fino is miles away from Pedro Ximenez. Getting to know the differences is personal. But for buying, unusually, supermarkets offer a good starting point. Sherry, unlike wine, has always been the kind of […]
THE place to experiment with sherry is probably in a restaurant like Brindisa, Barrfina or Iberica. There are different styles and nuances. Fino is miles away from Pedro Ximenez. Getting to know the differences is personal. But for buying, unusually, supermarkets offer a good starting point. Sherry, unlike wine, has always been the kind of product supermarkets do well – stable and steady – and relatively speaking it is cheap for what you get.
And for cooking it opens up a great vocabulary of southern Spanish dishes.
There is a video explainer here (in Spanish) and a rather more evocative one here with some horses and flamenco.
To get down to the fundamentals:
Sherry is white wine and needs to be treated as such – chilled and served in bigger glasses than those fondly seen in crime romance novels and found in antique markets. Not thimbles, but a wine glass with room to swill.
The different styles are marked. In cooking they produce different effects from the super dry fino to the sweet, almost balsamic Pedro Jimenez.
Usually in wine making, young vintages are sealed up to keep them away from bacteria that may alter or change or devalue them. But in the solar systems the barrels are deliberately porous, space is left at the top – usually space for two fists – and the seal is not air tight. The system works with the yeast, rather than against it, controlled by the amount of alcohol that is (or is not) added. Below 14.5% the wine oxidises and becomes vinegar. Above 16% the blanket of flor cannot survive and becomes olorosso.
Similar approaches are found in vin jaune in the Jura, Hungarian Tokaj and is also grown in Swan Valley Australia.
All sherry starts the same same way from the same grapes – Palomina, Pedro Ximenez and Moscatel. The colour comes from ageing in the cask. The white chalky soils of south Andalucia retain the humidity despite the heat of summers. The key difference is these wines are fortified with a slug of alcohol to raise the content to 15% where they ferment under a skin of flor. Any stronger and the alcohol will eat the flor and expose it to the air. In the solara, barrels are stacked up year to year and older vintages are blended with new harvests to create different flavours.
The extra alcohol allows them to keep, which is how they became popular for long sea journeys. The style dates back to to the Phoencians around 800BC. The Spanish maintain they are better curated than other white wines and therefore better value. The approach is very Amazon/supermarket friendly. Popular names like Harveys and Crofts hold their own quality wise (and price wise) with more outré (often very beautiful) labels.
The guide: from pale to chestnut
Manzanilla is a fino sherry but only made in Sanlucar de Barrameda, closer to the Atlantic and therefore exposed to the minerality and saltiness of oceanic winds. Usually aged for four years. Manzanilla is Spanish for chamomile, which is, is the clue – it is super dry, an aroma of fresh dough, almonds, green apples. The saltiness helps it pair with olives, with seafood, with fried fish and bakes.
Fino is the same as Manzanilla but grown further inland, has more earthy aspects, snug under its blanket of flora, it pairs with robust dishes like chorizo, shrimp, salad, fried fish and chips.
Amontillado takes the same base wine but adds more alcohol later in the process so it is half covered with the flor but then exposed to the air and may be kept as long as 12 years and more in cask which darkens the colour. Noble, more powerful, still dry, concentrated, pairs with rich dishes, cream sauces, risotto, roast pork, and lifts out the spices.
Olorroso has no veil of yeast to cover it because the alcohol can be raised to as high as 18 degrees and eats up the skin. Smooth and concentrated, it pairs with poultry, long slow cooks, heavy flavours like oxtail (with mashed potato).
Cream is an English adaptation followed by the Spanish being marginally sweeter from a dash of younger Ximenez added to the Olorroso. It is almost a dessert wine, pairs with foie gras or pate. Serve as an aperitif with a slice of orange on the rocks. It is nougat and toast.
For Pedro Ximinez, the grapes are left out in the sun to dry for two weeks to sweeten and can have as much as 40g of sugar to a litre of wine. The sweetest of all sherries full of raisins, toffee, licorice, caramel, a Christmas flavour, a dessert in itself (with ice cream) or with chocolate, cheesecakes or a non sweet dessert like a tarte tatin. Retired casks are sold to Scotland for maturing peat whiskies. As to Pedro himself, his story remains a mystery, no one is too sure, sadly, who he might have been.
