With its variety of styles and tastes, sherry pairs well across the food spectrum but has long been underappreciated and/or misunderstood in America.
Courtesy of Nick Africano
Restaurateur and sherry entrepreneur Nick Africano during a sherry tour of Spain. He hopes to lead future tours during the sherry harvest season in late August and early September.
Courtesy of Nick Africano
César Saldaña, president of the Jerez Regulatory Council in Spain, gives a lecture on Monday at the Feria En Rama sherry fair in New York City.
Provided by Carrie Molay
The annual Feria En Rama sherry fair, held in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood earlier this week, has grown into the largest sherry-focused event in the country.
Provided by Carrie Molay
Mirador, a Kingston restaurant that serves only Spanish wines, regularly hosts sherry classes.
Carrie Molay/For the Times Union
Sherry is wine. Perhaps the most versatile, undervalued wine you’re not drinking.
Made from white grape varieties grown around Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia, Spain, sherry is remarkably varied, ranging from dry and saline fino and Manzanillas to richer amontillado, sweet Pedro Ximénez and full-bodied oloroso.
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Nick Africano calls this a wet martini, and it follows the classic rule-of-thirds proportions.
1 ounce gin or vodka
1 ounce extra-dry sherry vermouth
1 ounce Manzanilla sherry
Combine ingredients in a mixing glass full of ice, stir for 30 seconds, strain into a chilled glass and garnish with a twist of lemon.
Capital Region and Hudson Valley wine shops with a small selection of sherry include All Star Wine & Spirits in Latham, Empire Wine & Liquor in Colonie, Ester Wine & Spirits and Kingston Wine Co. in Kingston and Purdy’s Discount Wine & Liquor in Saratoga Springs.
Sherry’s broad repertoire comes from its maturation in a solera system, a grouping of barrels that contain wines of different ages. Through fractional blending, older wine is extracted for bottling and replenished with younger wine. Like a sourdough starter, each barrel retains a trace of the wine that preceded it, sometimes dating back decades.
Flor, a naturally occurring layer of yeast that forms on the surface of some sherries as they age, also plays an important role. It protects the wine from excessive oxidation and gives dry styles like fino and Manzanilla their distinctive saline, savory character. Other sherries, including oloroso, are aged without flor and develop through oxidation. The result is an extraordinary range: light or rich, dry or sweet, pale yellow or deep amber.
Sherry is extraordinarily food-friendly, yet in the United States, sherry has long been misunderstood as sweet, even cloying. For many Americans, it remains difficult to understand, buy and drink.
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Nick Africano has spent the past decade expanding sherry’s audience, not from New York City or another major American wine market, but from Kingston.
From the West Village to Kingston
Africano considers himself a sherry troubadour and has built an entire world around the wine. What began a decade ago with monthly sherry dinners at Tertulia, the now-closed Spanish restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village, has grown into Buelan, his extra-small-batch sherry label; En Rama, a sherry club he runs with Kerin Bembry; Mirador, his Spanish restaurant in Kingston, where he also teaches classes; and Feria En Rama, a sherry fair he also runs with Bembry that has grown into the country’s largest sherry-focused event and now has the backing of the Consejo Regulador, the body that oversees the sherry denomination.
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Each offers a different way to discover sherry, from a glass at dinner to a rare bottle or a tasting with producers.
A restaurant as an invitation
In late 2023, Africano and Harry McNamara opened Mirador, where sherry is part of a larger Spanish experience. The restaurant, at 636 Broadway in Kingston, exclusively serves Spanish wines, with a wide selection of sherry.
But Africano does not believe people need to eat Spanish food to drink Spanish wine. His point of view is simple: Pair sherry with food you like.
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“Fino and Manzanilla go really well with pizza,” he said. “It’s cheesy and oily and umami, and the sharp, cold, and savory wine cuts through that.”
Dry sherry is traditionally paired with fried seafood. “Try it with fish and chips!” he said.
And instead of automatically reaching for a big red wine with meat, Africano suggests a richer, longer-aged sherry with steak.
Veronica Stoler, a longtime wine buyer who ran Despana Vino y Mas in Manhattan, which is perhaps the country’s most extensive sherry retailer, agrees.
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“One of the most interesting things about sherry is the variety, breadth and depth, and that it is one of the most food-versatile wines,” Stoler said. “You have the full gamut.”
She continued, “A glass of really cold fino is like sea spray, and at the beginning of a gastronomic experience, it’ll spark your appetite, making you hungry and thirsty.”
More of her recommendations: fried chicken and cold fino, and amontillado or palo cortado lightly chilled with jamon Iberico. Sherry, she said, is particularly good with foods that can be difficult to pair with other wine, including bitter artichokes and vinegar-heavy salads. Paired with roasted mushrooms and stews, sherry brings out another side of the food’s savory, umami character.
For dessert, the bitterness of dark chocolate offsets the sweetness of Pedro Ximénez, which is also a perfect drizzle for vanilla ice cream.
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Sherry is practical, too. It keeps well, and many styles are available in half bottles. You can open a bottle, put it in the refrigerator and continue drinking it over time.
Learning to drink sherry
Blanca Abramek, a regular at Mirador since it opened, had never tried sherry because she assumed it was sweet. She couldn’t imagine what it would taste like or what she would eat with it.
Then she noticed one of Africano’s sherry classes on Mirador’s Instagram. The experience changed her mind.
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Africano uses the wines to introduce Spanish history and the complexities of sherry without requiring people to know anything about it. But his approach is less lecture than performance: pour, taste, eat.
Abramek appreciated both the wines and what she learned about them.
Now, when she eats at Mirador or travels to Seville, where she goes regularly to study flamenco, she drinks sherry.
Sherry’s full repertoire
Stoler is a member of Africano’s En Rama sherry club and has attended the Feria En Rama sherry fair, where she has also presented and poured.
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“As a wine professional, I don’t need to be in any clubs, but I’m in En Rama because it’s hard to get these bottles — the good, geeky ones,” she said.
For Stoler, part of sherry’s appeal is its range.
“Fortified and oxidatively aged wine, sherry has no fruit,” she said. “Sherry relies on texture — it lingers and drips down your palate.”
She points to the age and variety of the wines available through the category, including bottles containing wine that has spent decades in solera. Feria En Rama, she said, gives people an opportunity to experience that range in one place.
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The fair has grown enough to attract the attention and backing of the Consejo Regulador. This year’s iteration ran earlier this week in Manhattan.
Like the interconnected solera system, Africano has created multiple ways for people to get to know sherry: through his own label, restaurant service and classes, a wine club and a fair that brings producers, novice drinkers and industry experts together. Always looking for additional ways to include people, Africano is also planning guided trips to Spain during the sherry harvest, which happens in late August and early September.
As he keeps finding new stages, he sings the same song: Sherry goes with that.
Dining and Cooking