Last week, Eric Asimov’s weekly column in the New York Times and corresponding blog post on The Pour extolled the greatness of one of the most underappreciated wines in the U.S.: sherry. Not only do Americans not drink much sherry, they don’t know much about how it’s made, either. I certainly didn’t until a few months ago, when I was a guest of Bodegas Osborne in Spain and had the chance to visit their vineyards and cellars in El Puerto de Santa Maria south of Seville. After I saw the indigenous yeast at work fermenting the grape juice and the solera system of blending wines from different vintages, I realized that sherry, like a good loaf of sourdough bread, is...
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This is where “covering current events” merges with “shameless self promotion.” In the November-December issue of Imbibe magazine, there’s a feature I wrote called "Sherry on Top," about—you guessed it—sherry. Now I’m a dyed-in-the-wool spirits and cocktails guy, and sherry is usually the province of the more oenologically inclined. But sherry is such a strange bird, with its multitude of styles and its solera blending process, that it appealed to the part of me that likes murking about with different combinations of flavors. Among the things I learned from writing the piece: I really, really like amontillados and olorossos. My previous experiences with sherry had mainly been with either the super-dry finos or the sweet and rich dessert sherries like...
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