DRY SHERRY: A quick guide

Adam McDowell on why you should drink fino and manzanilla, the thirst-quenchingest wines around

When we were planning Moose Milk, I told Christine that what I want out of life is pretty much: visit a museum, then go home to read and eat salty snacks (e.g., olives) and drink dry sherry.

I know some of you were with me until the end of that list. Despite the efforts that I and many other drink writers have made to popularize sherry — not to mention the fact that Spanish cuisine is now a fixture in the fine-dining scene of every major city and it’s not going away (gracias a Dios) — sherry just hasn’t taken off as a popular beverage in Canada. I am painfully aware that to most of you, dry sherry is more or less a joke (isn’t that what Niles Crane drinks on Frasier? et cetera).

Maybe we *do* know what to do with tossed salad and scrambled eggs …

But trust me on this. Summer is approaching and dry sherry is just about the most thirst-quenching beverage ever devised. To help persuade you, I ransacked the LCBOs of Toronto, from Royal York to North York, to get my hands on every dry sherry available in Ontario right now … so will you at least try one? Pretty please?  

I’m not asking you to choke down treacly-sweet dessert sherry. I’m talking about the driest of sherries, fino and manzanilla. In case you didn’t know, there’s a wide variety within the realm of sherry. Anglo cultures are most familiar with Harvey’s Bristol Cream and other sugar bombs, but some sherry — the kind that’s most popular in Spain itself, incidentally — is bone dry. As in, so dry it makes Chablis look like a milkshake.

As Talia Baiocchi explains in her excellent book about sherry, finos and manzanillas spend several years under flor, a foamy film of Saccharomyces yeast, “which feeds off of glycerol, plucking the meat off the base wine’s bones until all that’s left is a structural skeleton so delicate it’s as if it were woven together with fishing line.”

Fino sherry** can also be yeasty/funky, ever-so-slightly fruity or honey-sweet, and there’s often a perceptible salinity to it. And it pairs exquisitely with tapas, of course, but it’ll work really well with any food that conjures the Mediterranean sea — so not just serrano ham and olives, but also moussaka, anchovy pizza, salade niçoise, bruschetta … you get the idea.

Trying eight different sherries at once led me to some conclusions: First, I don’t care if someone tells you to drink dry sherry at cellar temperature, fridge-cold is better (it’ll be cellar temperature soon enough anyway).

Second, the double restriction of tradition and regulation seem to result in a generally high quality level across the category (as with bourbon).

Third, the difference from one dry sherry to another is relatively small, enough to be insignificant to a sufficiently thirsty person. So it doesn’t actually matter all that much which dry sherry may be available to you — grab whatever you can in the moment.

So, for that reason, I’m going to spare you long, florid descriptions of each sherry. Just shorthand, and a flavour map (with suggested ideal pairing ingredients).

Hidalgo La Gitana Manzanilla: Slate, hint of fruit, very mild. Best for neophytes?

Tio Pepe Extra Dry Fino: Bright, sweet, some citrus; deservedly popular

Alvear Fino: Very light, but with some saline bite in finish

San León Manzanilla: Chalky, basementy, hint of nuts

Lustau Puerto Fino: Salty sea air, barnyard funk, aromatic. My second favourite.

Barbadillo Pastora Manzanilla Pasada: Honey, flowers, vanilla, firm finish. My personal favourite.

Toro Albala Electrico Fino del Lagar: Chamomile, “thick” body that stands up to fat

Toro Albala Electrico Bombilla Fino Rama: Yogurt; lemon and other fruits. Comes in a bottle that looks like a lightbulb; see below!

Final piece of advice: Don’t try eight sherries at home. Once opened, they go off in a few days, even in the fridge. Sample a few at Bar Raval like a normal person.

The Toro Albalá bodega is located inside a former power plant, hence this bright packaging idea.

**A technical note: For the most part, I just refer to fino sherry, manzanilla sherry, and fino montilla collectively as “fino sherry.” (Montilla refers to wine that’s made in more or less the same way as sherry, but in Montilla-Moriles, a town outside of Jerez proper.)

And actually, while we’re here: Very few people on this planet would quibble with the distinctions between these terms — these are all similarly bone-dry, yeasty wines — and you definitely don’t need to care about this. But in case you’re curious, here’s how this all breaks down: