Decoding the most misunderstood of Spain’s fine wines
Fino sherries partner so well with tapas and other salty snacks, they’re well worth acquiring a taste for.

Sherry is the most misunderstood of all Spain’s fine wines, and those in the “fino” category are the most baffling of all for newcomers. These quirky fortified white wines are very strong, very dry, and taste decidedly strange to newcomers on first sip — as if someone had added a splash of some kind of natural cleanser to a dirty martini. There’s a good reason to look past the initial shock to the senses: Fino sherries partner so well with tapas and other salty snacks, they’re well worth acquiring a taste for.
Outside of Spain, sherry is typically seen as a sweet dessert wine that’s most often used in cooking — like port, but made from green grapes, not red. If Americans can picture sherry at all, the mental image is of an amber-colored sweet wine served in tiny glasses by British people in old movies. Within Spain, though, there has always been a preference for the younger, fresher, and paler sherries that fall in the fino category, some of which are labeled as “manzanilla.”
Fino sherries are made with the palomino grape in the Andalucia region that dominates the south of mainland Spain. Their unique flavor is acquired through long-aging under a veil of living yeasts known as flor. This yeast slowly converts the wine’s glycerin into aldehydes that give the wine a pungent scent of raw almonds, green olives, and bruised crab apples, amplified by a light fortification with grape brandy.
The wine should be served well-chilled and in small 2- or 3-ounce portions with the type of salty snacks Spain is famous for — cured jamon, oil-cured olives, and almonds or virtually any seafood that is salted, smoked, tinned, or fried. In this food context, fino wines like this one are a delight, tasting lighter and fruitier, like a palate-cleansing green-apple tonic.
Tio Pepe Fino Sherry
Andalucia, Spain; 15% ABV
PLCB Item #100057072 — on sale for $19.99 through Oct. 4 (regularly $21.99)
Also available at:
Wine Warehouse in Clementon, ($22.69) blackwood.winewarehousenj.com
Total Wine & More in Claymont, Del., ($23.99) totalwine.com
Hopewell House Wines & Liquors in Hopewell, N.J., ($24.49) hhwineliquor.com
























