Sherry is an acquired taste, to be sure, but once you've found the kind you like, you're likely to be hooked. The process of making sherry is long and complex, producing wines that are as sweet as the fullest bodied ports, to as dry as the Sahara. With sherry, there truly is something for everyone.
Instructions
Identify the Tastes and Aromas of Different Types of Sherry
1. Taste a Manzanilla sherry. Sherries vary from the bone dry to indulgently sweet. We're going to start on the dry end of the spectrum with the driest of the dry, Manzanilla. All sherries are made from a blend of three grapes. The most important grape in most sherries is the Palomino grape. (pronounced hee-men-ez) is used for blending in the sweeter sherries, and moscatel is used in a very minor way, also as a blending grape. Open your bottle of Manzanilla and pour a bit into your sherry glass. Swirl and smell. Scents of the ocean, shellfish and brine will appear. This is indicative of where it is from. All sherry must be made in the area of Spain called Xeres de la Frontera, but Manzanilla is even more site specific. It can only come from a seaside town within Xeres called Sanlucar de Barrameda. Sherry is fermented and aged in large open casks that allow a lot of contact with oxygen, which gives the sherries their varying degrees of sweetness. Because Sanlucar is near the sea, and is so humid, the yeasts in the sherry produce a constant foam on top of the liquid, called a "flor." This keeps the liquid out of contact with the air, producing a bone dry sherry. Taste the sherry. It will have notes of almond, green olives and even freshly shucked oyster. This is a truly unique wine. Manzanilla, because of it's delicate nature, must be drunk within 48 hours of opening it.
2. Taste an Amontillado. The next step up in dryness from Manzanilla is Fino, but their flavor profiles are very similar, so we're going to skip ahead to Amontillado. Amantillado is made from Fino that is fortified (neutral spirits are added to boost the alcohol level), so the yeast dies. There is only a flor for the short time before it is fortified, so it oxidizes more and is a bit fuller and a little sweeter than Manzanilla or Fino. Pour a bit into your glass. It is noticeably darker. Swirl and smell. The scent is one of hazelnuts and even a light cedar scent may be present. Taste it. On the palate it will be significantly heavier than the Manzanilla, giving up more roast hazelnut and a hint of honey. This is a complex sherry that opens up as it sits in the glass. One of the most prized sherries for any sherry connoisseur.
3. Taste an Oloroso. This is a long aged sherry that experiences no flor, whatsoever. This is, again, noticeably sweeter and fuller bodied than an Amantillado, because of the amount of time it is exposed to air, and because it is fortified to an even higher alcohol level than Amontillado. Pour some into a glass. It should be a shade or two darker than Amontillado. Swirl it and smell it. It will have a hefty amount of black walnut and fig on the nose. Taste it. This is the first sherry that will start to veer into the realm of dessert wine. It is full and heavy and has notes of lighter dried fruit, maple syrup and more roasted nuts.
4. Taste a Pedro Ximenez. This sherry is the only sherry that is made with 100% Pedro Ximenez grape, thus it's moniker. This is the sweetest and most indulgent of all sherries. Pour a bit into the glass. It is a dark, dark brown that some might confuse with black. Swirl it and smell. It is incredibly dense on the nose with hints of prune, burnt sugar and date. Taste it. On the palate it is equally dark. The tastes range from black strap molasses to brown sugar to baked cherries. In Xeres, people often drizzle a bit of Pedro Ximenez over ice cream for dessert!
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