By Al Drinkle
Sherry is wine. It’s capable of being one of the most rewarding and delicious wines you could conceive of, and when it is, it’s one of the greatest values for any commercial good on the planet.
Sherry is usually dry. Some sherry is inordinately dry because the biological processes that it undergoes in the bodegas actually eradicate any sugar that might be lingering post-fermentation. If talk of sherry makes you think of something your grannie used to drink, we either have very different understandings of sherry (I suspect mine is more informed), or your grandma was a badass.
Sherry can be sweet. However, sweet examples represent a miniscule fraction of the category and an even smaller percentage of qualitatively relevant sherry… But the best of these are some of the most singular and mesmerizing dessert wines imaginable.
Sherry is a place. It’s an incredible place. The name is a corruption of Jerez and its wines are liquid postcards whose myriad virtues can be enjoyed anywhere and anytime. For example, earlier this week I learned that Palo Cortado pairs well with snow removal and makes the act seem less demeaning.
Sherry is history. In terms of accessibility and affordability, it’s the easiest way to engage with wine that has been enriched by the stubborn passing of time. If you’re reading this on a phone or a computer, you can easily afford a bottle of 25-year-old sherry and could probably contemplate purchasing a 50-year-old example. It’s a tasty way to be an antiquarian.
Sherry enhances your food. In fact, its multiplicity of styles engenders so many earth-shattering pairings that even if you’ve been eating for your entire life, you’ll have a completely new way of looking at mealtime. The synchronicity can be so seamless that sherry will sometimes act more like an ingredient than a pairing.
Sherry makes your life smell better. So emphatic and explicit are its aromatics that you can discard your scented candles and Glade cans as long as you make sure to have a glass of sherry poured in any room whose odours you want to enhance. Oloroso translates as fragrant and should be used liberally to perfume your breath, your brain, your house and your life.
Sherry gives you confidence. Once your breath and your mind are adequately perfumed, rare is the personal or professional hindrance that you can’t overcome.Sherry engenders compassion and leads to spiritual transcendence. Its aromas mercilessly conjure your earliest memories (I have even re-experienced my birth while sipping ancient Amontillado) and the intricate nexus of spectral flavours can haunt you indefinitely. The result can be the attainment of liberation whereby your only suffering will be to think of the masses whose closed wine-minds impede their own transcendence.
In short, sherry will enrich your life. It has been known to make uncanny contributions to the health, happiness, intelligence and understanding of those who regularly imbibe. Integrate sherry into your life today and the measure of your dreams will be achieved with unexpected rapidity!
