Cracked open this sherry over the weekend, being kept in the fridge. How long is it good for?
Notes: Brown core with beige rim. Scents of raisins, toffee, and caramel. Palate of figs, plum, and as the name suggests, cream. For all the sticky sweetness, there’s just a hint of sour at the finish, which I found off-putting. 3.1/5
by DragonfruitFew1132
11 Comments
1 week max.
Young, dry sherries will lose character fairly quickly, but remain drinkable. Sweet sherries like Pedro Ximémez can last quite a while.
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In my experience Fino/Manzanilla fades more quickly (2-3 days) than Amontillado or Oloroso (4-5 days), but I don’t have as much experience with PX or PX-sweetened styles like Medium/Cream. Check in each day and report back
Many are already very oxidized, so they will decrease in liveliness some, but are still usable for a long time.
You can always cook with it or make sherry vinegar if you wait too long (esp if not the highest quality and price and you’re not sweating it). Most of those volatile aromatics burn off in cooking anyway.
PX I’ve stored for months re-corked and still enjoyed it
I’ve had a bottle of Lustau cream sherry of a very similar style open in the fridge for about two months. Just had a little glass last night, it was still delicious. Maybe a touch less aromatic but honestly I didn’t really notice any degradation at all, and maybe even some smoothing and what I would call improvement.
A ~~dry~~ less oxidized sherry is going to behave like wine and only last a few days to a couple weeks, but these sweeter more oxidized and higher alcohol sherries will go months easily. (Thank you u/sercialinho for the correction)
Yours is like $18 so don’t sweat it too much, keep it corked in the fridge and try some every once in a while as a test.
Once opened, Sherry can be stored in the fridge approximately:
Fino/Manzanilla ~ 2 weeks
Amontillado, Palo Cortado, Oloroso ~ 3 months
Dulce, Moscatel, PX ~ 1 year
Pale cream, medium, cream ~ 10 months
These are storage suggestions from Lustau. Personally, I would cut these times in half.
From the official Sherry [website](https://www.sherry.wine/enjoying-sherry/conservation-serving):
**Fino / Manzanilla**
* Closed bottle – up to a year
* Open bottle (*) – up to a week (*)
**Other wines**
* Closed bottle – up to three years
* Open bottle (*) – up to two months (*)
**VOS / VORS**
* Closed bottle – forever
* Open bottle (*) – three months
*(*) Tightly corked in the refrigerator.*
This question is more about taste than anything else: I’ve kept opened bottles of amontillado and cream/PX sherry for months without them becoming undrinkable. However, the amontillado had lost some of the interesting notes by the end.
I’ve stored that specific sherry (along with three or four other creams) for about three months, chilled, with an ullage maybe just shy of 50% of the bottle. It was fine, some slight dulling/fading but nothing that made it unpalatable/faulty.
As mentioned, already pretty stable in presence of O2 due to heaps of oxidation through production.
By “stored” I of course mean “forgot in the garage fridge between December and March”
For me I like to drink an oxidative sherry within 3 months and a biological sherry within like two weeks
pretty damn long in my experience.