This wine isn’t just for cooking — it’s for sipping, too
While sherry, like madeira and marsala, has more of a reputation of a cooking wine, this fortified wine is also worth sipping, chilled, in a small glass.
Savory & James Amontillado Sherry Jerez, Spain
$11.99
20% alcohol
PLCB Item #8490
Sale price through Aug. 4; regularly $13.99
Today’s foodies think of sherry more as a cooking wine than a drinking wine, since it is a staple of many classic sauces and soups. Like its fortified wine aisle neighbors, madeira and marsala, sherry is under-appreciated as a drink and offers some great bargains like this one.
True sherries come from southern Spain’s Jerez region and are always made with only green grapes, but their unusual production methods produce a wide range of colors and styles. In Spain, the most popular sherries are bone dry finos and manzanillas that look as pale as water but pack a flavorful punch. In the U.S., we more often see darker, sweeter sherries, that can get as black and sticky as molasses. This wine is in the middle of this scale, a lightly-sweetened amber style called a “medium amontillado” that can look, smell, and taste more like amaretto than like a standard wine, and is best served chilled in small liqueur-like portions, due to its alcoholic strength.
Jerez is in the desert-like part of Spain that was on display in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western movies, and the odd flavors of its wines reflect centuries of adaptations by winemakers to this hot and dry climate. Sherries get their unique flavor profile, reminiscent of pumpkin seed oil or walnuts in syrup, from amaturation process where the wine’s surface is deliberately exposed to air and develops a floating veil of yeast that would look familiar to those who make their own kombucha or wine vinegar. Many amontillados are dry, but those that say “medium” are sweetened with a thick raisin syrup made by sun-drying green grapes. This helps explain why this particular wine tastes so much like a caramelized apple tarte tatin topped with a scoop of rum-raisin ice cream.
Also available at:
WineWorks in Marlton, $10.99
Canal’s Liquors in Pennsauken, $10.99
Joe Canal’s in Bellmawr, $10.99