The Wine World’s Best Kept Secret
Synopsis
From the cover:
There is no other wine that is as versatile, as utterly unique in its range and production methods—and, unfortunately, as misunderstood—as sherry. For centuries, sherry was considered one of the world’s great wines, spoken about in the same reverential terms as the finest Bordeaux and Burgundies. But in the last few decades, sherry lost its way—and cheap, cloyingly sweet blends sullied the reputation of what remains one of Spain’s oldest and greatest winemaking traditions.
Thankfully, sherry is in the midst of a renaissance. Beloved of sommeliers and bartenders in the craft cocktail community, today sherry is being re-discovered and re-appreciated as an incredible table wine and essential component of many classic cocktails.
Sherry is essential reading for wine or spirits professionals looking to incorporate this complex wine into their menu, and for adventurous drink enthusiasts who are on the hunt for something unexpected. With a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the different styles of sherry, how they are made, and the people and places that produce it, Sherry demystifies what can be a confusing (and seemingly contradictory) wine.
A thorough buyer’s guide lists top producers and profiles the very best bodegas and wines. And a whole chapter on sherry-based cocktails illuminates a completely different side of sherry, featuring classic recipes like the Tuxedo and Sherry Cobbler, as well as modern creations from the country’s top bartenders (Jim Meehan’s East India Negroni, Derek Brown’s Kojo Cocktail). More than a dozen recipes for tapas and other delicious foods—best eaten alongside a glass of sherry, of course—round out this wonderfully eclectic, engaging, and inspiring collection.
My Thoughts
Talia Baiocchi is the editor in chief for PUNCH, a website dedicated to all intoxicants, where she has built an incredibly vast collection of stories about misunderstood characters and movements from the world of booze as well as overlooked wines, cocktails, and spirits.
Her book Sherry continues in that same vein as Baiocchi transports the reader to the home of one of the most misunderstood and overlooked offerings from the world of wine.
Sherry opens with Baiocchi arriving by train into the heart of the sherry wine region, Jerez de la Frontera, and beautifully captures the essence of Spanish culture; the sites, the sounds, the smells, and that laissez faire attitude that just creeps into every aspect of life.
I shuffled into the lavishly tiled station bleary-eyed and inelegant. In such a state only a few things were immediately clear to me. I was in Spain. Spanish was being spoken. To my right, in the train station café: the hum of the espresso machine, the faint mumble of a football game, and the clink of cups meeting saucers-a definably Spanish kind of clink and hum. Furthermore, I was in southern Spain. Nobody was in a hurry. In fact, people almost looked embarrassed to be making their trains.
As the pages continue to turn, Baiocchi does an admirable job attempting to describe the rules and vagaries of an almost undefinable wine region. And let’s face it, when that region is home to simultaneously both the driest and the sweetest wines of the world, trying to describe it with any sort of accuracy is a Sisyphean struggle. But push that rock up the hill she does; Baiocchi jumps right into the heart of sherry, from discussing each of the grapes used in the production of sherry to defining the terroir of the sherry region as well as the terroir of each city within the sherry triangle as well as the terroir of each individual bodega.
As crazy as it sounds, yes, each individual bodega does have it’s own sense of terroir.
Sherry, unlike any other wine region, is influenced as much or more by the aging process than any action taken in the vineyard. There are multiple factors that contribute to the terroir of the bodega; the bodegas proximity to the ocean to help regulate it’s temperature, the design of the bodega to allow an appropriate air flow throughout, the height of the bodega which allows barrels to be stacked higher while the ambient temperature gets increasingly hotter the higher you go. All of these factors contribute to the individual bodegas terroir.
Flor is a fickle thing and though the solera system does help mitigate the vast differences that emerge between barrels, part of managing it requires understanding and capitalizing on minute microclimates within the bodega.
This book also excels at defining sherry and identifying the multiple styles. Baiocchi spends several pages detailing the differences between fino & manzanilla, amontillado, palo cortado, and oloroso. I personally learned about a subset of styles within sherry referred to as en rama, or raw, that I was previously unfamiliar with. En rama refers to minimally filtered sherries. Winemakers often choose to filter their wines prior to bottling to remove any remaining particles and stabilize the wines. Unfortunately, filtering also strips some of the more subtle qualities of these already delicate wines. Offering these wines unfiltered is about as close to tasting from barrel as most people are going to get. Now finding a bottle labeled en rama is going to be an altogether different story but I’ll certainly let you know if I manage to dig one up.
…fino and manzanilla if it swims, amontillado if it flies, and oloroso if it walks.
The latter half of the book is dedicated to cocktail recipes that utilize sherry as the base ingredients. Having tried several myself, I can say with confidence that there’s a certain appeal to utilizing a base ingredient that has such a unique flavor profile. These drinks may not be for everyone, but they’ll certainly give you something new to try.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the absolutely beautiful photographs that are sprinkled throughout the pages. One develops a true sense of the deep history and rich culture that exists in the region. Pictures of vineyards, restaurants, and the wineries make you feel like you’re actually sitting in Jerez.
One thing to keep in mind, this book bills itself as a ”guide” to sherry, not a definitive text. Baiocchi is succinct in her descriptions of the different styles, regions, and bodegas but a lot of her explanations lack sufficient depth to use this as anything but an introduction to sherry; but again, that’s not what this book claims to be. This book contains the broad strokes describing a wine from a region that many have dedicated their entire lives to understanding; one can’t expect it to be broken down in a couple of short chapters. Baiocchi‘s Sherry serves as an aperitif, a toe in the water so to speak, which will hopefully introduce you to a part of the wine world many have never experienced.
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