Sherry Wine: Your Guide To Spain’s Most Unique Wines

It tasted like nail varnish. The cheap stuff, the stuff that you can smell a mile away and burns the hairs of your nostrils.

That was my first experience with sherry wine, the favourite vino of southern Spain. I’d been served the wine at one of my go-to local tapas bars in Seville, the glass shoved unceremoniously into my hand with a grunted “toma”.

The wine was pale and colourless, not what I’d been expecting. It smelt like nail polish remover mixed with seawater. I flinched after my first gulp: surely it had gone bad? But no, the waiter assured me, that was how it was meant to taste.

I pushed it to one side and ordered a cervecita, safe at last in the world of beer.

Needless to say, I wasn’t an instant fan. But five years later, sherry is one of my favourite wine regions in the world! These wines are captivating, unique, and have flavours that you won’t find anywhere else. They’re also a masterclass on the art of winemaking!

So let’s dive into the world of sherry wines. If you’ve tried these wines in the past and not enjoyed them, hang on in there. I promise you that these wines are worth a second sip!

Sherry: Not What You Expect

Whenever I serve sherry to people, their first reaction is “like the stuff my grandmother drinks?”.

And that’s fair!

In the English-speaking world, sherry often means syrupy sweet dessert wines, the stuff of your great-aunt’s Christmas liquor cabinet. If you’re even more unlucky, it might also bring to mind foul and acidic “cooking sherry” (which has as much in common with real sherry as your uncle’s ute has with a Ferrari).

But that’s not the full story.

In fact, it’s not even close to half of the story! There is so much more to love about sherry. Yes, sherry can be some of the sweetest wine on the planet. But did you know it can also be the driest?

Yes, some of it can taste like cyanide. But did you know that it’s the best pairing for Spanish food and tapas? And finally, did you know that sherry wines are not only the oldest in Spain, but some of the oldest in Europe?

If you’re interested in learning more about wine, Spanish culture, and the art of food and wine pairing, then sherry is a must-know wine.

The Land of Sherry Wine

You’ll find the Sherry winemaking region at the southern tip of Spain. This is Andalucía, home of flamenco, tapas, bullfighting, and siesta.

Specifically, the wine region is known as the “Sherry Triangle”. This ‘triangle’ is made up of three towns, and the area between them is the bulk of the D.O. Jerez-Xérès-Sherry (the official Spanish name of the winemaking region).

Those towns are Jerez de la Frontera, El Puerto de Santa María, and Sanlúcar de Barrameda. (Remember those, you’ll need them later).

Jerez de la Frontera is the most important of the three. The word “Sherry” is even derived from it! When the Moors ruled the area, they called the town Sherish. Over time, Spaniards transformed that word into Jerez. The English also anglicised it, into sherry.

The vinos de Jerez or “wines of Sherry” are literally just that: wines from the land of Jerez/Sherry.

The Climate

Andalucía has some of the hottest temperatures in Europe. When I lived in Seville, the Andalusian capital, it would get so hot I thought I was suffering a divine punishment.

We’re talking 50°C—the European record.

Luckily, Jerez is by the coast, so temperatures tend to be more moderate. Still, the mercury can crawl as high as 40° in August! We’re close to the equator here, at the 36th parallel north.

It’s a warm Mediterranean climate, with an average annual temp of 17.3°C. With 300 days of sunshine in a year, rain comes in winter and autumn, averaging 600mm.

The nearby Atlantic helps to moderate this hot and sunny environment, keeping the humidity up and the temperatures in check. In spring and summer, you can also feel the effect of the cool, humid wind coming from the coast to the west (the Poniente). The other prevailing wind (the Levante) comes from the south-east, hot and dry.

The Soil

The first thing you notice about the land of sherry wine is the soil. In the middle of summer, it can blind you! These are the stunningly bright white soils called Albariza.

Albariza Soil

This soil makes up 90% of the land in the sherry region. It’s mostly chalk, with some limestone, clay, and a bit of sand.

Thousands of years ago, these rolling hills were covered by the Atlantic Ocean. When the waters retreated, they left a base of pulverised fossils and marine skeletons that left the chalky soil of Jerez that shimmers in the sun.

This kind of soil has a mythical status among winemakers. It’s similar to the limestone soils you find in Champagne and Chablis in France! The benefits of albariza lie in its water retention.

When the limited rain does fall in cooler months, the water gets sucked down deep into the soil. The limestone base acts like a sponge, holding the water so that the vines can dig deep and drink in summer.

Vines have been known to push their roots down to a depth of six metres!

Other Soils: Barros and Arenas

The other 10% of soils in Jerez are made up of Barros and Arenas. The former is fertile, full of clay and organic matter, and only 10% chalk. It’s too fertile to produce good wine, and vineyards on Barros soils have been reduced in the last decade.

Arenas soils are mostly sand-based, with 10% chalk. As a result, they have poor water retention. They’re more typical in coastal zones, and best suited to moscatel grapes.

The Grapes of Sherry Wine

There are three grapes to know when drinking sherry wines. They are palomino fino, moscatel, and Pedro Ximinez. Of those, palomino fino is the most important.

Palomino Fino

This is the grape to know! Palomino fino makes up a whopping 98% of plantings in the Jerez region. Overall, it’s a fairly boring grape.

The fruit flavours are muted, and the acidity is almost painfully low. This makes palomino a bad choice for table wines, although a few wineries in southern Spain are experimenting (with mixed results).

But as you’ll see, these characteristics make it perfect for making sherry wines! The grape is a blank canvas; ready for a winemaker to develop its flavour in the winery. Its low acidity makes it susceptible to oxidation, and the lack of fruit aromas make it a great carrier of the chalky, coastal flavours of the region.

Pedro Ximenez

While only making up 0.5% of plantings, Pedro Ximenez (P.X.) is the second most important grape in the sherry triangle. Compared to palomino, P.X. has way more sweetness and acidity. Consequently, you’ll mostly see it used in sweet wines.

The name comes from a Dutch solider, Pieter Siemens. According to legend, Pieter brought cuttings of sweet German grapes to plant in southern Spain. But that’s just a legend! Modern tests have shown no similarity between P.X. and any German grape variety.

In sherry wines, the sweetness of the grape is maximised through a process called soleo. The grapes are picked at their most ripe, and then laid out on straw mats in the sun. As the water content evaporates, the sugars in the grapes concentrate.

Moscatel

Moscatel (a.k.a. Muscat of Alexandria) makes up 1% of plantings. These are mostly planted on poor, sandy soils. The sweet grapes go through the same soleo drying process as P.X., and are often used as a sweetener in other wines.

By themselves, moscatel grapes create a sweet and honeyed wine that can be an absolute dream to drink!

The Wines

Locals like to say that there’s a sherry wine for every moment, and every personality. If you didn’t like sherry when you first tried it, don’t worry. There are plenty more styles to try!

Broadly speaking, we can say that sherry is a fortified white wine produced in the Jerez region. But that’s the tip of the iceberg. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find up to 10 different styles of sherry wine!

That can be a lot to handle. So let’s start simple. At a basic level, there are two categories of sherry wine: those that are aged biologically, and those that are aged oxidatively.

We’ll start with biologically-aged sherries.

Biologically-Aged Sherry Wines

These are the more delicate and drier of the sherry wines. They’re also the most popular at Spanish tapas bars! These wines are all dry, and like all dry sherry wines, made from a base of palomino fino.

After harvest, the grapes are pressed. The juice from the first pressing (called the primera yema) is used to create the biologically-aged wines known as Fino and Manzanilla.

This must is fermented in stainless steel to a base wine of 11-12% ABV, and then fortified to 15% with the addition of a neutral grape spirit. The wine is then sent to age in giant 500L oak casks (only filled to a 2/3 capacity). This is where the magic happens!

The humid air of the sherry triangle is home to a very special strain of yeast. For these yeasts, the freshly fortified wine and the pocket of air above it is the perfect vacation home. Sherry wineries all age their wines above ground in open-air warehouses, with an earthen floor, to encourage extra humidity for the development of yeast.

It starts to form a colony on top the wine, appearing as a foamy blanket. In Spain, we call it the velo de flor; or veil of yeast.

This yeasty film protects the wine from air, keeping it safe from oxidation. The resulting wine maintains a pale colour and delicate freshness, even after several years in the barrel! The yeast microbes also eat any residual sugar in the wine, making these sherries the driest wines in the world.

Finally, the flor also imparts a special flavour to the wine. When you sniff one of these wines, you’ll be hit by aromas of bread, chalk, nuts, and herbs.

Fino Wines

Most biologically-aged sherry wines are called Fino. These wines are crisp and delicate, with aromas of Mediterranean herbs and almonds. By law, these wines must spend at least two years ageing under flor. (But in practice, many finos spend up to years being aged in this way).

Fino is the perfect tapas wine! Pair it with olives, salted almonds, and cured meat or cheese and never look back.

Manzanilla Wines

The other purely biologically-aged wine is known as manzanilla. The main difference from fino is that manzanilla must only come from one of the three towns in the sherry triangle: Sanlucar de Barrameda.

Why?

This town is the closest to the Atlantic ocean, and closest to the Guadelete River. As a result, it has even more humidity than the rest of the region and the flor that grows on its wines is about 3x as thick!

These wines have an even more delicate body, and a racy current of salinity. You’ll taste chamomile tea (“manzanilla” in Spanish) along with almonds and something like the ocean.

These wines must spend at least 3 years in the barrel, but can stay for up to 8.

Try pairing it with shellfish and hard cheeses.

Oxidatively-Aged Sherry Wines

These wines are the richer cousins of fino and manzanilla. Made of palomino fino, these are also dry wines.

After the primera yema is taken to make the more delicate sherries, the grapes are pressed again. This second must (the segunda yema) is used to make oxidatively-aged wines that don’t need to be quite as elegant.

Oloroso Wines

The must is also fermented to a base wine of 11-12% ABV, and then fortified to even stronger to 17-18%. It’s added to the same style of massive oak casks, but the high alcohol content means the flor can never form.

That means the wine gets full contact with the air, and oxidises. It goes a dark mahogany colour and develops spiced, nutty, and toffee-like flavours. Spaniards call this wine oloroso. While the toffee and fig-like flavours may invoke a sense of sweetness and roundness, these wines are almost as dry as fino. They do, however, tend to have a bit more body and structure.

As the water content of the wine evaporates, the alcohol concentrates. Over the years oloroso spends in the barrel, its alcohol can reach heights of above 20% ABV!

This wine is the perfect companion for Spanish Iberian ham. Given its richer body, you can also serve it alongside grilled meats and veggies.

Biological + Oxidatively-Aged Sherry Wine

Got all that?

Good, because there are just a couple of styles to go. To complete the list of dry sherries, we have to go through amontillado and palo cortado. These are wines that begin as biologically-aged wines, and end up being oxidatively-aged.

Amontillado Wine

Amontillado begins life as a fino or manzanilla. But at a certain point, the winemakers decide that the wine lacks the necessary elegance, and decide to kill the yeast by adding alcohol, bringing it up to 17-18% ABV.

Alternatively, the flor on one of these wines might just die naturally. Either way, the wine loses its airtight protections and begins to oxidise.

These wines have a dark amber colour and an intense aroma. You’ll get notes of vanilla, hazelnuts, fig, and honey. But the wine still has the light body of a fino!

Pair it with oily fish like tuna or salmon, or full-flavoured cheeses and charcuterie.

Palo Cortado Wine

This is the vaguest of the sherry wines. The official rules say that a palo cortado must have the aroma of an amontillado and the structure of an oloroso.

That’s a bit confusing, but it’s all to do with the wine’s history.

Originally, these wines would occur naturally, or by mistake! When a fino went weird, it was taken away. Maybe the yeast was forming strangely, the base wine was developing differently, or the oak cask exhibited unique characteristics.

When that happened, the wine was re-fortified and the flor removed. For the rest of its life it developed oxidatively and took on some of the features of an oloroso.

This is the rarest of the wines, with less than 100,000 bottles produced a year! That’s compared to the 60 million bottles of sherry wine sold in the same time.

You can pair it with whatever you’d serve alongside amontillado.

The Sweet Wines: Vinos Dulces Naturales

Welcome to the dark side of sherry wine! These rich and syrupy wines are my guilty pleasure, basically dessert in a glass. They’re diabolically and diabetically sweet.

These wines are made with either Pedro Ximenez or moscatel grapes. After picking, they’re laid out on straw mats under intense sunshine. The grapes dry and the sugars concentrate to as much as 300 grams per litre!

You need to use special yeasts to ferment something that sugary, so the base wines are produced separately from the rest. Once the alcohol reaches 5% ABV, neutral grape spirit is added to halt fermentation and retain the natural sweetness of the wine.

Pedro Ximenez

Once fortified, this wine is aged oxidatively to develop nutty and tobacco-like aromas alongside the classic dried fruit flavour. Its thick, dark ebony colour is unmistakeable!

Allegedly, this is the sweetest white wine in the world. It’s perfect alongside dark chocolate, or a funky blue cheese like Stilton!

Moscatel

These wines are a little lighter in colour than Pedro Ximenez, and have a slight floral aroma of jasmine or orange blossom. It’s also aged oxidatively to bring out some spice and vanilla.

Given its slightly floral and fruity flavour, this is the perfect wine for fruit-based desserts or pastries.

The Sweet Wines: Vinos Generosos de Licor

Let’s get into grandma’s wine. This second style of sweet wines are the most well-known outside of Spain, beloved by grannies everywhere.

To create these wines, sweet wine or grape must get mixed with dry sherries. The result is a sweet wine, but one that’s not as sweet as a vino dulce natural!

Depending on the dry wine, you can get three different styles.

Pale Cream

Take fino and mix it with a little bit of concentrated grape must and you get a Pale Cream! It has the same straw yellow colour as the base wine, but with a heightened sweetness and fruitiness.

This is the newest style of sherry, first developed in the 1960s.

Medium

These wines are generally a blend of amontillado with grape must or sweet wine. The sugar levels range from 5-115 grams per litre. Anything below 45g/L gets labelled “Medium Dry”, and anything up to 115g/L is “Medium Sweet”.

Along with the regular amontillado aromas, you’ll also smell baked apple and sweet pastry.

Cream

The fullest of the blended wines, Cream is the combo of oloroso and P.X. Full-bodied and velvety, there are touches of spice and nuts alongside the dried fruit flavours of the P.X.

Weirdly enough, you can serve Cream on ice with a slice of orange for an amazing sweet aperitif!

The Solera System

So those are the 10 wines! Easy, right?

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. But we can’t say goodbye until we talk about the solera system. Along with flor and oxidation, this is what makes sherry unique in the world of wine.

This is a method of ‘fractional blending’, where wines of different vintages are slowly mixed together before bottling. To understand this process, I’m going to ask you to picture a sherry winery.

Imagine the feel of the damp earth beneath your feet, and the smell of the sherry wines ageing in barrels around you. If you look up, you’ll see rows and rows of wine barrels all stacked up high on top of one another.

When the wine arrives at the winery after being fortified (be it fino, P.X., whatever), it goes into the barrel on top. This is called the sobretabla.

At the end of the year, wine from the bottom barrel is put into bottles and sold to thirsty Spaniards. But! Only two-thirds of the wine is allowed to be removed. The remaining third gets topped up with 2/3 of the wine from the barrel directly above it, known as the first criadera (the wine nursery).

The 1st criadera gets topped up with wine from the next one up, called the 2nd criadera. This goes all the way up to the sobretabla, with as many as 16 steps!

As a result, every bottle of wine is a combination of every harvest that has come before it. In wineries that are centuries old, you’ll still find a few drops of wine from the very first harvest in every bottle!

Ageing Classifications of Sherry Wine

Using the solera system means that you will almost never see a vintage year on a bottle of sherry. You might see the bottling year, but usually you won’t see any date at all!

But for some very special sherries, there will be an “age” stamped on the front. This number signifies the ‘average’ age of the wine inside, taking into consideration all of the different vintages and proportions inside!

At the moment, only three average ages are allowed to be put on the bottle:

• 12 years old
• 20 years old (also called V.O.S.: Vinum Optimum Signatum or “Very Old Sherry”)
• 30 years old (also called V.O.R.S.: Vinum Optimum Rarum Signatum or “Very Old Rare Sherry”).

The labels apply to all types of sherry, be they dry or sweet. If you see any of these labels on a bottle, you’re in for a good time!

Read More & References

Thanks for reading my post on sherry wine! I hope that you find this weird and wonderful wine just as fascinating as I do.

If you want to continue your sherry education, you can find great resources here:

• Sherry Notes: Articles, reviews, and background on different wineries in the region.
• Sherry Wines: A treasure trove of information and updates from the world of sherry.
• La Ruta del Vino y el Brandy: The sherry wine “route” to help plan your next trip to the area!

Read more of my guides to Spanish wine here. You can also check out my foodie guides to southern Spain, including where to eat in Seville!