The Wine Buff

We are looking to add Sherry to our exculsive portfolio of wines and ports and next Wednesday the 26^th of Oct we have a Sherry tasting in the Wine Buff Cork, yes you heard right a Sherry tasting not the mass produced sherry “Grandma drinks at Christmas” but real sherry from the oldest wine producing regions of Spain and in Robert Parker’s magazine the Wine Advocate, he gave rave reviews to 3 different bodegas and the scores ranged from 87 points all the way up to 96 points. Whether you agree with Parker’s scores or not, if someone with so much knowledge about wine can put a sherry in the same league as a first growth Bordeaux, maybe there is something to be said for it.

The wines are from 5 to 20 years old and are made in the traditional solera system. Basically this means that each harvest new wine is blended with old wine. This is accomplished by building a pyramid like stack of barrels, one on top of the other, where the oldest wine is at the bottom and the newest wine is at the top. In this way, the wine at the bottom of the stack is drawn off to be bottled, and in theory, contains wine from the very first time the solera was filled up. The goal is to add complexity to the wine over time, while mitigating the harmful effects of bad vintages.

How do you get different styles of Sherry ?

Sherry is what it is because of a yeast called flor, if you looked into a barrel of sherry it would appear as having something wrong with it. Every year, in a percentage of the newly filled barrels the yeast flor begins to grow and creates a thick layer of yeast cells that coat the top of the wine within the barrel. Where the wine touches the air it creates a slightly oxidised flavour.

 Sometimes this is actually wanted, as in the case of Tawny ports and Oloroso Sherries – the longer the wine is in contact with this air, the darker it will become, taking on colours of dark wood and rich caramel. With Fino sherry, the flor protects this from happening, and a wine aged 20 years is still as crystal clear as the day it entered the barrel.

Wines that develop the flor, a process that is neither guaranteed nor exactly understood, can produce the following styles:

Fino - Served cold, pale in colour, sharp acidity with light salt nut quality.

Manzanilla - A light style of fino make around the port of  Sanlucar de Barrameda a city in the south of Spain. This style is the only type of sherry that is so site specific it cannot be produced anywhere else.

Amontillado is basically a wine that is first aged under flor but which is then exposed to air. The wine with time becomes darker and richer than a fino.

Oloroso is left to mature longer with the air producing a darker, richer wine. Again naturally dry,  can be sold sweetened this is called Amoroso.

In the end, most Sherries are dry with two exceptions, Cream and Pedro Ximenez.

Pedro Ximenez is a grape that is harvested at a naturally high sugar level, these grapes produce an intensely sweet dark brown or black wine.

Cream Sherry -  a common type of sweet sherry made by blending different wines, such as oloroso sweetened with Pedro Ximenez.