TN: Sherry of undoubted personality

WINE TALK
1

Evening all,

Even as a regular Sherry drinker and incredible fan, I cannot possibly summarise the drinking experience this wine presents in a sentence. Head down the page and the note will make all clear.

Just so you know: this is a Fino Sherry bottled at ten years old when, we are told, the growth of flor yeast on the surface of the wine has persisted for this unusually long period. It was bottled from a single cask on 24th October 2011 without fining or filtration.

Fino Tres Palmas, Gonzalez Byass
I’m not sure where to begin… OK: The back label tells us this is an “old, rare, fino sherry of exceptional finesse and delicacy of aroma”. Well, yeah, but that is somewhat missing the elephant in the room. It does have a range of subtle, complex aromas, with nutty tones, a chalky minerality, sweet hints and a definite old Sherry characters that you normally wouldn’t associate with Fino. However, the main thing it smells of is some appallingly toxic organic solvent. It reeks of something like acetone, but not that attractive. I can feel polyps grow in my nasal cavities as I sniff this. The palate continues this theme. There is a real density of flavour, it is a big, big Fino of quite staggering power. Drawing on my experience as an experimental scientist (I was only euphemistically an experimental scientist in that I was obliged to do experiments from time to time, I considered myself a ‘theoretical biologist’), the power is that of an evil carcinogenic compound that one normally would only find in a lab and almost no one knows what that stuff smells like because the moment someone suggests using it everyone else runs from the room in terror. I would really like to love this wine, and I think it has interest and there is much to like about it, but ultimately I hope I never have to put another drop in my mouth in the rest of my life. If you love Sherry it’d be worth having a mouthful, it is an expression of Sherry of unique personality, but in order to save you the £35 The Wine Society are charging per bottle, anyone who visits Elitistreview Towers in the next half hour can claim their free glassful; after that it gets dumped in a drain somewhere a long way from our water supply. There is about 40cl left in the 50cl bottle after the editor and I have been frightened off by it, so plenty to engage and horrify at least several hundred overly-enthusiastic Sherry fans.

Oh yes, the back label tells us we should open this within six months of the bottling date. Rubbish! Most of us will be alive for far longer than six months…

Cheers,
David.

2

I do wish these were available in the US…

3

Hello again,

That sounded quite negative, didn’t it? I don’t mean to be critical of this simply because it is extremely odd and rather expensive. I have plenty of time for ‘extremely odd’ and if it makes me and those I share it with happy I’ll find money from somewhere. And that’s my point. I find Sherry normally gives me a lot of pleasure yet when I sat down to enjoy this with the missus, who is an extremely well-informed and open-minded drinker, struggle as we might and desperately wanting to almost nothing about this wine made us happy. We simply did not enjoy the experience. So even though I don’t really like to be negative (honestly I don’t!) I think I encapsulated the drinking experience quite accurately.

Thank you, and goodnight!
David.

4

Is there no possibility that this is simply a spoiled bottle, David? after all, there’s a reason why these wines have historically been filtered and fortified. Though I must admit at the price I’m not tempted to find out.

5

Love your notes. Thanks.

I want to like Sherry, but for the most part, its only the sweet sticky ones that I enjoy. Most of the dry ones taste like you describe this although it is probably the bottles I select. Can you recommend one that you do enjoy?

6

+1, have never been a fan of any “dry” Sherry I’ve had, but the sweeter ones are incredible and far better values than Port.

7

Ditto, but I’d settle for 5%!

8

First of all, David, thanks for your hilarious note of a wine we in the USA will undoubtedly never get to taste.

It is obvious that you enjoy and are well-experienced with Sherry, so I of course take you at your word: somewhere between the smell, the taste and the swallowing, this was not a pleasant wine. For the potential benefit of those who may not have been introduced to this type of wine, I will at least suggest some reasons beyond the obvious: this is simply a genuinely awful and regrettable wine.

There are certainly bad individual bottles, hard to tell from a sample of one. There is also the possibility of some unfortunate atmospheric/temperature/emotional/personal internal chemistry combination. Then there is the often observed tendency for these unfiltered wines to radically change with a few hours, days or even weeks of air.

Oxidatively aged Sherry is indeed a challenging category, and many of my favorite examples did not become even truly drinkable (let alone favorites) for me without some serious time in the refrigerator (opened), and then some warm air afterwards. So, oddly enough, even though I believe every word of your tasting note, I would probably still spring to try this wine, if it were sold here, because I am a curious fellow, and I know that it will evolve for days or even weeks after opening (granted, there is no guarantee that it will get better…).

I would also note that it seems to me that some of these very aged Sherries are examples which were never intended to be bottled and drunk unblended; they perhaps are too intense, rather corrosive, and it may be that they simply belong as part of a blend, the smaller, enhancing, more mystical fraction of some otherwise more pedestrian…fino, if that is the case.

9

David, I don’t mean to pry (yet here I am doing it anyway!), but I don’t recall your mentioning another half before. Have you recently tied the knot? If so, hearty congratulations and best wishes! And the same even if it wasn’t so recent.

Regards,

Peter

10

Morning all!

Tom, it’s possible it was a dodgy bottle, I suppose, but I would suggest not. What flavours and tastes were recognisable were definitely those of Sherry, but age had amplified them to something extreme in the dry-cleaning solvent spectrum. I think Steve G hit the nail on the head saying this is a wine never intended to be drunk as it had been bottled - it would have been far better as an extremely small part of a blend. As such, I think he was also right to characterise it as an unfortunate and unpleasant wine - that’s how it struck me!

Loren, there are two light, dry Sherries I would recommend as brilliant in a femtosecond, and they could well be the wines I drink most often. Both are extremely good value but you do need to make sure your supplier has a good turn-over of stock because they do not last forever once bottled. Both are from the producer Hidalgo, who’s boss Javier H is a super cool geezer and also (at a Sherry tasting in Oxford) is directly responsible for getting me so drunk I didn’t understand how my bed worked. He kept saying I’d offend him if I didn’t down yet another glass… Oh how my head ached, but what a top chap! Anyway, the first wine to try is Manzanilla La Gitana, which is very light, dry and refreshing. Drink it from the fridge (I almost always have a bottle in mine) and be surprised that such a delightful drink is so cheap. If you like that then look out for Manzanilla Pasada Pastrana; similarly light and dry but a rare single vineyard Sherry so I find it more complex and slightly weirder. Delicious! Both a joy to drink on a summer’s afternoon, with tapas or in an extremely hot bath.

Steve, yeah, what you said! I was happy to drop the cash to secure a bottle as well, as my view of Sherry is enthusiastically positive and I expected much from this. It delivered much, but very little of that made me happy. Before I took the bottle to the hospital to get incinerated I had another little taste and it had seemed to fall apart in the manner normal Fino and Manzanilla normally do after days of being open in the fridge. Unsurprisingly, it was far more horrific than that given its starting point. I wanted to like it and enjoy the drinking experience, but it really was impossible. I suppose I was sort of glad it was horrible in such a totally whacked-out, bonkers and baroque manner - that is sort of what one expects from old Sherry. But for future old Sherry I’ll stick to Amontillado, Palo Cortado and Oloroso.

Peter, this January my partner and I will have been together for ten years. Whilst Dani has never been less than solidly supportive and very strong throughout a period I’ve often been mad as a bicycle, and has often had to haul me off to hospial when I’ve done something foolish, he has generally asked to be mentioned minimally as he has been rather shy and, understandably given all that has happened to him and us, often been rather depressed and wanting to hide. I’ve often wanted to hide when not at my most balanced, so I can understand this. Perhaps I should add that escaping London, including dumping a well-paid but incredibly demanding job he was trying to hold down whilst simultaneously trying to keep me safe, has made him indescribably happier. This ‘downsizing’-thing can work a treat! Thank you anyway for your kind words; I could not ask for a more loving and caring partner who I have corrupted so brilliantly into the ways of having an obscenely good time! :slight_smile:

I’ve got five appointments in my diary today, more than in years and two of them are medical, and I’m not the slightest bit wound up about this. Winchester is lovely and filled with lovely, helpful people. London was rather too intense for me, I feel. Tom, fancy visiting for lunch one day next year? It’s different here. Let me know!

Thank you, and good morning!
David.

11

Manzanilla La Gitana> , which is very light, dry and refreshing. Drink it from the fridge (I almost always have a bottle in mine) and be surprised that such a delightful drink is so cheap. If you like that then look out for > Manzanilla Pasada Pastrana> ; similarly light and dry but a rare single vineyard Sherry so I find it more complex and slightly weirder. Delicious! Both a joy to drink on a summer’s afternoon, with tapas or in an extremely hot bath.

Thanks, David for the additional comments!

I also heartily endorse the above recommendations, they are superb matched pair, priced reasonably and way below their comparable quality.

12

Hi Serge,

To be brief: I provided a winning example!

If I may be verbose: Dani is a Finnish chap who lived in Sweden most of his life. Both of these countries only sell booze through state controlled monopolies which have very limited selections at generally frightening prices sold only during very restricted hours. Moreover, the food culture in these countries is… erm… not terribly sophisticated. I have been reduced to tears by the meat and cheese sections in a Finnish supermarket. The cheese section was tiny and arranged by fat content which peaked at 15% - so low it was perverted. The memories of what they sold claiming to be meat are too painful to relate. The only decent restaurant I’ve dined at in Stockholm was a veritable stream of bat’s piss: it shone out like a shaft of gold when all about was dark.

Then Dani moved into the flat under mine. I was a bit lonely at the time so when he got home from work I’d knock on his door and say things like, “I’ve got a bottle of Billecart NF '82 in the fridge, some 1990 d’Angerville in the decanter and earlier I scored a dozen oysters and some 24-day dry aged fillet steak. Fancy joining me?” Dani is an intelligent and tasteful fellow who knows when he’s being offered better stuff than Sweden provided so gleefully signed up for the Dr Strange complete course in corruption and consequently crapulence. Who wouldn’t?

As for me: I may have been extremely bonkers and not gay at the time, but I was capable of judging people as nice and soon realised one should take love wherever one finds it, even if it doesn’t come with an enormous pair of tits attached (my previous selection criteria for ‘closer’ friends).

Despite the occasional, sometimes not occasional enough thanks to paranoid schizophrenia, tough time we have only become happier and got up to more and sillier larks and capers than we could have expected. It’s worked out well.

Isn’t that a nice story? Sorry if I went on but I’m just feeling appreciative after quality support at the first meeting with my new psychiatrist. I hate those kind of meetings and they make me feel ill-at-ease, and apparently really verbose, for ages afterward.

I’ll go and take my pills now.

Anon,
David.

13

Thanks. Will look for these and give them a try. Much appreciated!

14

David, I should love to pop down for lunch in the new year.
I think I understand your note a bit better now-I have certainly had some much-vaunted sherries which while astonishing are also functionally undrinkable, like the Valdespino Coliseo which is so intense that a teaspoonful does most of the job of a bottle of madeira in a sauce. I feel a bit the same about the Equipo Navajos series-undeniably incredible but equally not really enjoyable to my vulgar palate. I must admit I am fully content with the Hidalgos you recommend in their class.