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| I'll let you into my dreams if you let me into yours |
Well then, we were in Barcelona seventeen years ago and I had a very short shopping list - my friends and I knew s*** about Spanish wines besides the "usual suspect names" in Rioja - but I knew I wanted to try a Sherry. I ran into, and snatched, a bottle of Lustau Los Arcos, which I'll get to in a bit. For a couple of years, I bought sherries every time I was abroad. It made sense. I was still at the stage where finishing up most of a bottle at a go seemed... dangerous. And the thing about sherry is, you can pour yourself a glass a day - even a glass a week - and the bottle thrives. It even improves.
Sherry really fit my lifestyle at the time.
For years, few Sherries of note were imported to Israel. Until Caftory, in the most important and valuable decision of his life, burst the dam with Fernando de Castilla.
And now, even Lustau is imported, the brand that taught me so much about the world of Sherry.
I feel... vindicated!
Manzanilla, Papirusa, Sanlucar de Barrameda, n.v.
Sherry is basically a wine made of the Fino Palomino grape, aged in soleras of different ages under the local yeast, flor, which protects the wine from oxidation, while endowing it with a pungent, salty, iodine twang. In the course of the long aging, the wine also picks up a nutty character, depending on the specifics of the style, of which there are many. Fino and Manzanilla are the lightest of the styles in terms of weight and color. They're aged for relatively few years, so the specific nuttiness they display is that of cashews, rather than pecan or walnut. The two are cousin appellations, if you will, Manzanilla being somewhat the lighter of the two. The Papirusa is typical, the nose nutty, with a bit of iodine, oranges and a whiff of sea waves splashing on the docks. The palate is rustic, with sweet, sour, salty flavors. Mostly salty. Any fruit you sense is a side-note.
Amontillado, Los Arcos, n.v.
The Sherry that started me off on my journey!
I can't figure out how and why it's still affecting me the way it does. I'm hardly the same man I was seventeen years ago. And yet, even an exploratory whiff transports me to a luxurious Men’s Club in Victorian London. I sense antique, lacquered wood furniture on the fringes of my senses. Someone with a good, yet unintrusive, aftershave is smoking a good cigar and pecan pies and fresh pastries are now being served. I sip it, and the gruff, salty flavors, complex and clear, married to baked apples and orange jam in mid-palate, take me across the sea to a tapas bar, across the sea to a tapas bar.
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