The social drinker

Iadmit to having a sweet tooth, so, in my book, there are few pleasures quite like a good dessert wine. Usually that means a Sauternes or Auslese, but last week I was bowled over by a sherry made with the intense Pedro Ximenez grape — a white Spanish wine-grape variety grown in the Jerez region in southern Spain.

The taste was so wonderfully sweet, so completely over the top, that it made me feel that I was drowning in an enormous vat of figs, chocolate and sugar.

This figgy delight was called El Candado, which is the Spanish word for ‘padlock’ and explains why every bottle comes with a rather tacky padlock attached to it. But if you are sweet-toothed or new to sherry, I advise you to forget the padlock and enjoy this drink, which is made by simply drying the grape in the Andalusian sun for a fortnight before the usual fermentation and ageing process begin.

Sherry like this is delicious if you like sugary notes, but you do not need to be reverential — the sweetness can be toned down by serving it on the rocks (or even with a vodka and slice of lemon) or poured over ice-cream.

I drank the sherry on a cold afternoon in Las Tapas de Lola, an excellent Spanish restaurant on Dublin’s Wexford Street, but the taste brought me right back to an InterRail visit to Jerez, in Spain, more than two decades ago, when I was first exposed to this under-rated drink. I remember walking into a bar at six in the morning and marvelling at workmen in their blue overalls smoking cigars, drinking sherry and arguing about politics. It was impossible to imagine a similar scene back home.

El Candado is available from selected stockists around the country, and sells for €15.99 for a half bottle.