Wine Review: Delving into the Spanish sherry  

Sherry is a Spanish wine that is very sweet, flavorful, popular and affordable.  

Sherry falls into the class of after-dinner wines where it is served as, with or after dessert. It is made from grapes that are indigenous to Spain and aged in a method called solara, which also is purely Spanish. A solara is a grouping of a series of wooden barrels, often in the form of a pyramid.
 
The wine to be bottled is drawn from the bottommost or last barrel, which is then refilled from the next barrel in line. The top or first barrel is then filled with the newest wine to begin its aging. This is done until all of the wine has been moved to the next barrel down the line. When the wine in the last barrel has received the proper aging, the process is repeated.  

This may seem like a complicated and inefficient way to age wines, but it does work well, as the first sip of a sherry wine will attest to. While all sherry wines offer similar flavors and aromas, it is the way these flavors and aromas are presented that separates one from another.  

Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry ($20)
This wine is so popular that it can easily be considered as the unofficial ambassador for sherry. A blend of 80% palomino and 20% Pedro Ximenez grapes, Harveys Bristol Cream is probably the most popular sherry in the United States. This sherry has the basic flavors and aromas of caramelized apples and raisins with hints of toffee and, as one might expect, oak, but in very dignified amounts. If you have never sampled a sherry wine, I would like to recommend that you start right here.  

Gonzalez Byass Solera 1847 ($25)
Almost the same makeup as the Harveys Bristol Cream – 75% palomino and 25% Pedro Ximenez – this wine has been aged for a minimum of eight years and it definitely shows it by its smoothness and depth. This is a full-body wine, which means that it has weight (body); with weight comes a greater concentration and presentation of the flavors. The flavors and aromas of vanilla and oak are easy to identify thanks to its solara aging. This is another theme on the same song, but what a beautiful theme it is. Here, too, the sweetness does not interfere or clash with the fruit of the wine but rather accompanies themit.    

Gonzalez Byass Nectar ($25)
This offering from Gonzalez Byass has been made from 100% Pedro Ximenez grapes and presents another face of sherry. After the grapes for this wine have been harvested, they are laid out on straw mats in the vineyard to become raisins by allowing the water in the grapes to evaporate, thus concentrating the flavors and aromas. The finished wine exhibits chocolate in abundance along with toffee, espresso, vanilla and oak, derived from its long solara aging. These flavors are encased in a cloud of sweetness that is neither cloying nor overdone. I found the finish of this wine to be long and memorable.

Lepanto Solera Gran Reserva Brandy ($55)
For those who like a somewhat stronger beverage at the end of a meal, this brandy truly deserves the title Gran Reserva (Grand Reserve) as it has been made from high-quality, hand-selected palomino grapes. After the distillation, the brandy was set to age for nine years in oak casks previously used to age sherry wine. After a time, it was transferred to other barrels used to age a different type of sherry wine, making for a total of 12 years of oak aging. What results is a soft, smooth brandy that displays a bit of the sherry sweetness derived from the aging casks. While I do not often write about brandy, this is a beverage that I feel that I can call to your attention knowing that its quality and enjoyment will impress you, as it did me.

Wine columnist Bennet Bodenstein can be reached at frojhe1@att.net.