Sherry ain't just your grandmother's tipple

Sherry ain’t just your grandmother’s tipple.
(This is my favourite wine cliche).
Sherry is also the most difficult song in any karaoke catalogue... and a category of wines, neglected, but much more interesting and delicious than most of us know.

There are “sherries” produced around the world – most (but not all) of these are truly awful – but strictly speaking sherry is reserved for the wines produced around the town of Jerez de la Fontera. Here, in Spanish Andalucia, the southern-most tip of Spain reaches across the mouth of the Mediterranean, towards North Africa.

Now that you’ve relocated your imagination... open your eyes: The sun is intense. Scrubby-looking vines grow in dazzling fields of chalky-white soil.

Most of those vines are Palomino. These grapes are harvested to produce a fairly neutral, dry, white wine which becomes the base for virtually all types of sherry.


Fino
The first type of sherry is Fino. (You may also see Manzanilla. This is basically the same style of wine, but is produced in particular sub-region). Young Palomino wine is “fortified” (brandy is added) to raise its alcoholic strength to about 15abv. As this wine rests open casks, a yeast “flor” (Sp: flower) blooms. Its hard not to refer to flor – a layer of whitish, waxy, floating yeast – as scum.
Flor protects the wine from oxygen. (As anyone who has had a sip of wine open too long knows, exposure to air can destroy a wine).
Flor also leaves traces of flavour in the wine upon which it rests.
Classically dry and best as fresh as possible, the flavour and scent of fino will remind you of rising bread dough. There is even a touch of saltiness (truly odd for any wine); some say that this is glimpse of the sea.

Oloroso
Would you prefer sherry sans scum?
Like fino, oloroso begins with young, dry palomino wine. Again, brandy is added; but in this case, the alcohol level is raised high enough to kill any off the yeasts which would bloom into flor. Oloroso then matures exposed to the air.
So much oxygen would be fatal to almost any other wine; but it is the source of an oloroso’s character. It slowly moves through amber to mahogany-brown. Around a nutty focus (chestnuts & hazelnuts), olorosos are decorated with aspects ranging through raisin, fig, orange zest, smoke, dark chocolate, leather, spice and vanilla.

Amontillado
Can’t make up your mind?
Neither could amontillado.
Occasionally, a fino’s flor will die, leaving the (now formerly) delicate fino exposed. Quite rare, this wine will be called a “palo cortado”. While keep some of its fino (yeasty) character, it will then develop some oloroso nuttiness.
Much less rarely, a dose of brandy will be used to (deliberately) kill the flor. Such a wine will be called an amontillado.


Sherry dry, Sherry sweet
Sherry, at least here in North America, is better known in its sweetened guise.
In order to sweeten classic sherries, a second wine (made from either Moscatel, or Pedro Ximenez) is blended in.
Sweetened fino is called “Pale Cream Sherry”.
Exported amontillado and oloroso, if not specifically labeled as “dry”, is most often sweetened. This adjustment ranges from a slight (intended to suit a palate intolerant of a dry sherry) to severe. At the latter end of the spectrum, “Harvey’s Bristol Cream” is a (profusely) sweetened oloroso.
Pedro Ximenez (often shortened to “PX”) and Moscatel are occasionally bottled as wines in their own right. These are intensely sweet, tasting thickly of raisins, figs, molasses, smoke and spice. I’ve experienced a few fantastic examples... but never wanted more than a single ounce at a sitting.


The Solera System
Since the mid-19th century (to suit the export market’s demand for consistency) sherry has been matured in criaderas y solera or just "solera".
A solera is a collection of barrels (“butts”, or “botas”), best imagined arranged in rows stacked upon each other. Each year a small amount of wine is removed, and bottled, from the bottom barrels. This row is topped up with wine from the row just above, and so on. Finally, the top row of barrels is topped up with that year’s fresh (already fermented and fortified) wine.
Wines from a particular solera may be labeled with a date. This refers to the year in which the solera was begun. Use your imagination: the wine in your glass is a blend of history – a bit from each year reaching back to this date on the bottle.

Book Review: "The Science of Wine"

I’ve just come from my local library to whom I returned Jamie Goode’s “The Science of Wine: From Vine to Glass”.

To begin, here’s a positive (if tempered) note: I liked it enough that, if it is published in paperback, I will purchase my own copy. (Yes, I am deliberately implying that I don’t feel sufficiently motivated to pay the $48cdn price for a hardback).

As this book emphasizes, our understanding of wine can be enriched by pursuing (or marveling at) its complex biology and chemistry. The grapevine is a quirky beast, fermentation is the product of a microscopic festival, wine maturation is a barely understood process, and chemistry and psychology meet where wine intersects with our senses.

Jamie Goode (and his editors) obviously worked very hard to strike a balance between subject matter, laden with lots of potentially dense science, and the capacity of an only moderately scientifically-literate audience. There were a few passages in which the balance was lost, but generally the book is an excellent introduction to many areas of wine-science. I think that those occasional lapses into opacity were be forgiven by readers thankful that the balance never leans in the other direction, towards being patronizing.

The book is divided into three sections, each a collection of short introductions to a topic within wine-science: “In the Vineyard”, “In the Winery”, and “Our Interaction With Wine”.

Many of the chapters, “PRD (partial root drying) and Regulated Deficit Irrigation” for example, may not sound particularly charming... but for anyone willing to get in touch with their inner-geek it was really quite engaging.

Highlights, to my mind, were chapters debating “Naturalness in Wines: How Much Manipulation is Acceptable?”, two chapters on the micro-biology (yeasts and bacteria) of fermentation, and finally, an excellent introduction to the physiology (and psychology) of smell and taste.

Yes, this book is for the geek in each of us.
Think of it as a pleasantly absorbing way for the two of you to get in touch.