Laying Down the Lore of Sherry

Learning about sherry is to peer through the looking glass of wine and history. It’s clearly an irreversible process, for I have never known anyone to regret taking the trouble.

I think I can trace my fascination for sherry to two things. My father, whose life’s calling as an Anglican priest has done nothing to diminish his fondness for the beverage, was one of the earlier wine enthusiasts in my native Ballarat. In the early ’60s he would team up with the headmaster at Ballarat Grammar, where he was Chaplain, to put on natty little sherry soirees where the school’s sophisticates would regularly meet, taste and natter.

They would dot the room with exotic bottles and evocative names, Valdespino, Tres Palmas, Dos Cortados, Pedro Domecq, Don Zoilo and Tio Pepe; wonderful sherries all, steeped in tradition and clothed in mystery. More mystery, in fact, than the staff would wager. Unbeknowns to them, their good padre and headmaster maintained a fine stock of empty old sherry bottles which they would regularly top up from the same supply of Brown Brothers Dry Sherry, fresh from Milawa. I just hope none of them reads this piece.

From the earliest times I showed any interest in wine I also remember a tatty old picture of a sherivador solemnly standing amid the soleras of his bodega, slowly lifting his venencia high above his head and skilfully pouring its contents into a copita without spilling a single drop; his face a mask of indifference to the improbably difficult task he has just performed.

For the uninitiated, a solera is a collection of barrels of maturing sherry of a single type and a bodega is the Spanish term for the cellar in which they reside. A venencia is the instrument used to draw wine from the barrels butts of sherry without disturbing the thick growth of flor yeast on the wine’s surface, usually made of a small silver or stainless steel cup attached to a long handle of whalebone. A copita is the tiny Spanish flute from which sherry is traditionally consumed. A sherivador, however, is the name I have just made up for the gallant Spanish cellar-master, standing tall and proud in his long-sleeved white shirt and studs, black trousers, immaculate bow tie and silk cummerbund. His correct title, although less romantic as far as I am concerned, is actually capataz.

All frightfully evocative and romantic as I’m sure you’ll agree, and unquestionably a worthy excuse for any young boy or girl to let their thoughts wander far beyond the domain of the supermarket refrigerator cabinet, and all of its monotonous bottles and cartons of fruit juices, treated milks and waters minerale.

My favourite sherry is old Manzanilla, which to the purists is actually hardly a sherry at all. Sherry, you see, is strictly from the chalky soils around Jerez pronounced Hereth, while Manzanilla comes from Sanlucar de Barrameda, a coastal town about twenty-five kilometres away. We ascribe the extra tang and distinctly salty character of Manzanilla to its proximity to the sea. The air is more humid and salty, the grapes ripens earlier and with more malic acid.

Young Manzanillas taste just like tangier fino sherries, with great bite and freshness. They are drier than the Gobi Desert and zing like a Scandinavian rollmop, if you know what I mean. The older they get, the oilier and more viscous they become, building also in flavour and unmatchable character. The tang remains. On their way to becoming an amontillado style, they are sometimes sold as pasada, indicating that they have moved on from fino, but have yet to reach amontillado.

The most widely planted sherry grape in Spain is the palomino, a thoroughbred grape ideally suited to its role. Relatively neutral as a base wine, it develops its character through the very oxidative maturation that only sherry successfully undergoes.

Pedro ximines or simply, pedro for short is another grape which has been cultivated in Andalusia since the earliest times. It is picked late and very ripe, then left to lie under the vines for two weeks to further concentrate its sugars to make rich, luscious dessert wines. These are either sold straight and unblended as Pedro Ximines, of which the Emilio Lustau wine is a wonderful example, or else can be blended with dry oloroso bases to impart sweetness, colour and flavour. In their unblended condition they are the nearest thing the rest of the world has to the north-east Victorian muscat – dark, cloying, unctious and perfectly irresistable.

Although they might have been at it for some time previously, by 1617 English merchants in the Far East had acquired a taste for sweet sherry shipped out from England in barrels placed in the holds of sailing ships of the East India Company. Sometimes the wine would actually make its way back to England unsold, where, having by then undertaken an extensive sea voyage which twice crossed the equator, it had been slowly and exquisitely heat-treated to perfection. The idea took off – with ships carrying the stuff as ballast for the purpose – whereupon gleeful Englishmen would descend like hounds whenever the news came from Bristol or Southampton that a holdful had arrived back.

Although the need to carry such wines for such a journey by sail has long since passed, some of the better sherry houses duplicate the process because it worked so well. I adore the Emilio Lustau East India Solera Sherry, which looks every inch the part in its black bottle painted in white enamel. And as Emilio himself would concur, Christmas pudding never had a partner as good.

The overwhelming majority of the sherry, local and imported, is made or blended in large volumes by essentially large to very large companies. Although their product is almost invariably worthwhile, for me to omit mention of the almacenista is not a mistake I wish to make in this story.

An almacenista is an eccentric phenomenon, a small stockholder of sherry, frequently a group of professional people who treat the idea as a hobby. They buy single vineyard, unblended sherries, most of which they sell to the larger shippers to improve their blends. Some people, of whom Emilio Lustau is one, buy their wines and bottle them, enabling you or I to enjoy that almost paradoxical phenomenon, the unblended and ‘unique’ sherry.

The wines themselves, which are to sherry what Enzo Ferrari was to motoring, are invariably intriguing, frequently seductive and surprisingly good value. You haven’t experienced the last word on sherry until you’ve tried them. Please login to post comment