Sherry and Tapas Tasting

West London Wine School
28 February 2012

As we have rather a liking for sherry (!) and with increasing interest in what used to be a deeply unfashionable drink, we trotted off to a sherry and tapas tasting at the West London Wine School.  The trip was a Christmas present (alongside a bottle or two of sherry!) and we weren't disappointed.  Rather oddly the venue was a Big Yellow Storage unit in west London but all was explained when we arrived (with slightly raised eyebrows - in over 20 years in London, we hadn't even heard of the train stop - Imperial Wharf):  we were ushered into a specialist wine storage unit with a long table delightfully laid with seven (yes, seven!) glasses each and platefuls of rather fine-looking nibbles.    We were welcomed by proprietor Jimmy Smith and not long afterward the evening started in earnest, with a very pleasing Moscatel (Lustau Moscatel de Chiopina) from Jerez, very refreshing indeed alongside fresh fruit salad.  Smith gave an interesting and entertaining talk with slides as we worked our way through six other tastings, each accompanying food chosen to complement and be complemented by the sherry.  It was fascinating to realise that the sherry production process enables such a wide range of sherries to be produced, from utterly gloopy, syrupy sweet wines made from Pedro Ximenez grapes and containing 370g of sugar per litre (yes, 370!  It went beautifully poured over vanilla ice cream!), to bone dry Manzanilla and Fino styles, which went down well with savoury treats such as olives and walnuts.  It was also very interesting to discover that the blending process means that every bottle of sherry is a blend of every year's sherry produced in that solera, right back to the very first year - which in some cases is about 200 years!  Yes, the proportion of the oldest years in each bottle is vanishingly small but it's certainly more than homeopathic (!) and the idea of age and continuity is very appealing.

My favourites were a 12 year old Amontillado (Lustau) inhaled with manchego cheese, honey, bread and hazelnut oil, and a 30 year old Palo Cortado (Gonzales Byass, Jerez) which slipped down very nicely with gingerbread.  They were both wonderfully smooth and rich, with a little sweetness but certainly not too much (although interestingly, their tawny golden colour made them "look sweet" if you get my drift).  The 30 year old Oloroso Dulce that accompanied a slab of stilton and fruit cake was very fine too. 

Spitoons were provided but neither we nor any of the other guests used them, nor were we encouraged to.  Seven largish glasses of sherry later we rolled home rather merrily.  A very fine evening strongly recommended.

SB