Back In Favour

Sherry swings into hipster territory.

- Victoria Burrows

At Bodega Delgado Zuleta in Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain, master sherry maker Pelayo Garcia takes samples of liquid from wooden barrels with a venencia – a small cup on a long stick. He pours the golden liquid into glasses, and we drink. There are delicious hints of nuts and citrus on the nose, and it’s dry, but soft on the palate, with an elegant salinity and complexity. It’s a young Manzanilla that will eventually, after at least 30 years of nurturing, mature into Delgado Zuleta’s speciality, the Quo Vadis? Amontillado.

The bodega’s Quo Vadis? and other refined sherries, such as its flagship La Goya and its groundbreaking organic Manzanilla, called Entusiastico, are helping to elevate the status of Spain’s unique fortified wines around the world. In recent decades, sherry has been unfairly saddled with the reputation of being one of those sweet, syrupy drinks grandmothers bring forth from rarely accessed liquor cabinets on special occasions. But there are actually 10 types of sherry: five dry and five sweet. Fino, Manzanilla, Oloroso, Amontillado, and Palo Cortado are dry, while Pedro Ximenez, Moscatel, Pale Cream, Medium Cream, and Cream (the latter three being blends) are sweet.

The thirst for premium varieties of sherry, especially drier ones, but also particularly Pedro Ximenez, is growing.

“Global sherry sales may be down, with supermarket sales declining, but we’ve seen impressive demand for our premium sherries,” says Garcia. “The sherry revival in the ultra-premium category started taking off about six years ago.”

Delgado Zuleta, which dates back to 1744 and claims to be Spain’s oldest sherry bodega, isn’t the only sherry producer seeing interest sparking in high-quality sherries.

GLOBAL REVIVAL