FIGS& DATES
If your only association with sherry is the bottle of sickly cloying Harveys Bristol Cream tucked away in the back of your grandparents’ liquor cupboard, you probably don’t know that the drink was once considered one of the world’s great wines. And it may be regaining that lofty status as the sweet modern styles make room for truer throwbacks that are much drier, if not bone dry.
“It’s really undervalued, undersung, underappreciated because it’s not the most easygoing wine style in the world,” says Lesley Provost, a certified sommelier and wine educator living in Toronto. “It has a real cult following in the wine profession. People in the profession have a deep respect for sherry. They appreciate that sherry producers struggle to get good prices for their wines and that they are high quality and not simple products to make.”
To be fair, sherry’s bad reputation as a dessert wine to be sipped in tiny glasses by little old ladies may only be among the Anglo diaspora. The sugary sherry styles represented by Harveys and others came about in the post-Victorian era when the Brits were drinking tea with four sugars. Provost, who in June is bringing in a group of wine educators from Spain to teach wine professionals in Canada about sherry, says that style never took off in places such as France and Spain.
Unfortunately, Canada doesn’t have access to a lot of the drier sherries, though that is changing. There are two main styles: fino and oloroso. Both start out as dry wines, but a novice should start with the latter since finos can be challenging. They are made in a very oxidated way so their flavour doesn’t have a lot of fruit. Instead, the long exposure to yeast leaves a bready and to some extent chemical taste profile. “They are a complex flavoured and aromaed wine that doesn’t have immediate sugar appeal,” Provost says. Olorosos, though, aren’t exposed to the same nutrient-eating yeast for as long and exhibit more fruity flavours such as figs and dates.
But the best way to try either is to hit up a sherry-friendly restaurant and pair up small glasses with a variety of food to see what works for you. Provost’s favourite food pairings are hickory-smoked almonds, potato chips, olives and bread and cheese. “With food, it’s a wine that makes a lot more sense,” she says.