save the rest for another night

[Bux]

[Amanda Hesser, Pairings - For Antipasti, Plates of Tapas or Pea Soup, Bring Out the Sherry, NY Times, May 14, 2003] I also like to have a bottle in the refrigerator for nights when I don't expect to use a whole bottle of wine. You can have a glass of sherry with this fragrant pea soup, for instance, and save the rest for another night when you're having, say, roasted cod wrapped in jamón.

Ms. Hesser doesn't say if she'd recommend a particular sherry with her pea soup, but the article mentions fino and manzanilla. I think I'd like an amontillado. I used to like serving a dry Madeira with pea soup and they're not as dry as a manzanilla or fino.

Many of us open a bottle of wine and don't finish it that evening. Whites seem to suffer less the next day and I suppose because I keep them in the refrigerator as I would a dry sherry. Still, I wonder about the advice of keeping sherry for another night, which implies it might not even be the next night. The implication seems to be that sherry, a fortified wine, keeps better than an average table wine. I wonder if that's true. There were a few comments about the wines of Jerez and Sanlucar de Barrameda in the Spain forum in a thread about Andalucia recently.

I've been dreaming chilled, sharp and flavorful manzanillos, but had one here in NY last night: Dismal. Maybe they change flavor when they leave Al Andalus?

We've been puzzling over the relative disappointment of manzanilla here in NY. The crispness of the manzanillas and finos in Spain reinforced that opinion. I've heard others say that all of the wines of Jerez, including manzanilla from next door Sanlucar de Barrameda are stale when sold in the US. As they're all fortified wines with high alcohol and the product of a solera, as well as non-vintage, I just don't see how they could go stale so quickly.

I've had some second thoughts on this issue. It seems that freshness is essential. Looking at a Spanish guide to Spanish wines, the comments I find under Consumo prefererente: for finos and manzanillas range from "at this moment," through "at this moment" and all the way to "right away."

I wonder how well finos and manzanillas keep after a bottle is opened. Looking at a bottle of manzanilla, I see the label says 15%. That's not so high in alcohol. Any thoughts on how long one might expect the wine to be enjoyable.

[Craig Camp]

Lets try to simplify a rather complex topic - Sherry.

Basically there are three types of Sherry all of them aged in barrels about 2/3 full and loosely bunged:

1. Fino - a 'biological' wine as they call it as it is covered by 'Flor' a yeast that creates a thick white coat over the wine which protects the wine from oxidation and also interacts with the flavor of the wine. This Flor can be quite thick and the thicker it is the more delicate and less oxidized is the wine. These wines include - Fino, Manzanilla (Fino from Sanlúcar de Barrameda) and Amontillado. Manzanilla is more delicate than Jerez Fino because the climate in Sanlúcar de Barrameda favors the growth of a thicker covering of Flor. Amontillado is an old Fino or Manzanilla that goes through an oxidative process by extending aging after the 'Flor' dies. Fino and Manzanilla should be about 15% alcohol while Amontillado will be about 18%. Do not buy a Fino style with a alcohol content over 15.5% - they are terrible. The best wines are produced from the Palomino vine.

2. Oloroso - an 'oxidative' wine as no 'Flor' forms and the wine is exposed to oxygen.

These wines include Oloroso. Oloroso is dark brown, bone dry, powerful and incredibly complex. True 'mediation wines'. The best are produced from the Palomino vine.

3. The super sweet wines - Pedro Ximénez is bottled on its own, but its main function to be added to the dry Oloroso to create Cream Sherry. It is an oxidative wine like Oloroso, but it is SUPER sweet, almost like syrup. In fact it makes a good ice cream topping. The already sweet grapes are dried to make them even sweeter. The other super sweet Sherry is Moscatel which is bottled on its own. It is also in the syrup category.

Just to confuse there is a style inbetween Amontillado and Oloroso called Palo Cortado.

All the styles of Sherry are produced by the Solera system which is simply a fractional blending system that blends wines of various vintages to produce a consistent style in a continuous process. Finos go through the Solera process in about 6 years while great Oloroso soleras may be 50 or more years old.

For a good explanation of the Solera process Click Here and then click the All About Sherry Link

OK but what does that have to do with how well Sherry keeps once open. What it means is that the Fino wines will be damaged by oxygen and need to be consumed as young and as fresh as possible. While the Amontillado, Oloroso and sweet wines that are already exposed to oxygen are 'pre-oxidized' so to say and will keep well in open bottles for a more extended period.

In my opinion Fino and Manzanilla should be consumed within 3 days of opening and should be no more than a year old. Amontillado should be consumed within 10 days of opening, Oloroso and Cream within a month and the super-sweets within two months.

[Bux]

It took a while for you to answer my question, but I guess it took a while for me to ask it. I probably should have also linked to Frank Prial's Echos of Spain in Just a Few Sips in the same section as Amanda Hesser's article as her article was meant to be read in conjunction with a tasting of finos, including manzanillas and amontillados.

Real sherries--not the stuff in jugs from California served at graduate student art openings of my youth--is terrific stuff and a bargain. A fino is a wonderful before dinner drink and a bottle of manzanilla at a seaside restaurant in Sanlucar de Barrameda is an excellent accompaniment to a luncheon tasting of many seafoods. I daresay, a bottle at less than ten dollars in a restaurant is an incredible value. Even in Spain, outside Andalucia, Sherry is not as popular as it deserves to be. From what we observed in Madrid and elsewhere, beer and cava, in that order, seem to out sell sherry as an aperitif. It's hard, however to come back from a visit to Andalucia without a renewed interest in sherries. My guess however, is that a fino at bar in NYC is almost always going to be a disappointment. It's rarely fresh and even a newly opened bottle may not offer the taste one expects in Sevilla or Ronda.

[Robin Meredith]

I'm currently enjoying (and that should probably be in capital letters) some Hidalgo Manzanilla La Gitana in 500ml bottles purchased from a discount retailer on Long Island (Bottle Buys or Bottles and Cases, I can never keep them straight). I've been a big fan of this wine for years, but this particular stash has two major virtues:

*The absolutely delightful 500ml format (perfect as an aperitif for two or three);

*A date coding system on the back label which tells you when bottling took place (these were dated November 2002).

As for the storage question - I've been keeping my eye on this, and I'm not noticing any appreciable deterioration after 3-5 days in a cold fridge (this is a non-issue for the most part, since the bottles just seem to disappear ). They do, however, need time to warm up - drinking this stuff at refrigerator temperature is a crime.

I remember attending a seminar on sherry many years ago - the moderator (Karen Macneil) was making a big deal about how fragile the wines are and how quickly they must be consumed, and the owner of Hidalgo chimed in and said they should keep for at least a week in the refrigerator - this may be one of those situations where we make things harder than they really need to be in the name of connoiseurship.

Edited May 15, 2003 by Robin Meredith (log)

[Craig Camp]

I'm currently enjoying (and that should probably be in capital letters) some Hidalgo Manzanilla La Gitana in 500ml bottles purchased from a discount retailer on Long Island (Bottle Buys or Bottles and Cases, I can never keep them straight).  I've been a big fan of this wine for year, but this particular stash has two major virtues:

*The absolutely delightful 500ml format (perfect as an aperitif for two or three);

*A date coding system on the back label which tells you when bottling took place (these were dated November 2002).

As for the storage question - I've been keeping my eye on this, and I'm not noticing any appreciable deterioration after 3-5 days in a cold fridge (this is a non-issue for the most part, since the bottles just seem to disappear ).  They do, however, need time to warm up - drinking this stuff at refrigerator temperature is a crime.

I remember attending a seminar on sherry many years ago - the moderator (Karen Macneil) was making a big deal about how fragile the wines are and how quickly they must be consumed, and the owner of Hidalgo chimed in and said they should keep for at least a week in the refrigerator - this may be one of those situations where we make things harder than they really need to be in the name of connoiseurship.

Hidalgo La Gitana is a gorgeous wine and they are obsessed about keeping fresh product in the market by not over-selling distributors. They deserve all the credit in the world both for an extraordinary product and for their dedication to quality in all aspects. Their date coding system is an example of their high standards. Visit the Hidalgo website here.

Smaller bottles like 500's and 375's should be standard for Fino/Manzanilla. They only bother with 750's because the USA market insists on them. Is this also the case in the UK?

I am sure the very fresh wines of La Gitana are fine after a week, but I would be concerned about larger brands where the product is older to begin with. When making recommendations for other people's money I like to stay conservative and still look at 3 to 4 days as optimum.

[Duncan]

Hidalgo La Gitana is a gorgeous wine and they are obsessed about keeping fresh product in the market by not over-selling distributors. They deserve all the credit in the world both for an extraordinary product and for their dedication to quality in all aspects. Their date coding system is an example of their high standards. Visit the Hidalgo website here.

Smaller bottles like 500's and 375's should be standard for Fino/Manzanilla. They only bother with 750's because the USA market insists on them. Is this also the case in the UK?

It mostly seems to be the case. I think perhaps the supermarkets here have a price point for sherry because they sell most of it in 750ml or even 1litre bottles. The only half bottles I've seen in local supermarkets are for more expensive sherries, so the half bottles usually cost more than any of the full ones.