The start of a new year is always a good time for campaigning, so while you’re feeling post-Christmas bluesy and susceptible to any idea that might just blow a hole in the clouds, I’d like to fill your cup with the joyful suggestion that we make this year the year of the return of sherry.
Sherry?
Sherry.
It’s hard to imagine that this forgotten little fortified wine was once fought over by kings and conquistadors. More recently it was held up as such a refined tipple that it provided five consecutive lines of dialogue in Withnail and I. It gave Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons their first hit record. Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a glass of sherry and a mince pie. My aunty even had a dog called Sherry. But today? Walk into your local and ask for a glass of sherry and the sniggers will follow you all the way home.
They don’t even stock the stuff any more! Not so much as a dusty bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream at the back of the shelf behind the Kahlua, just for when their more sophisticated clientele (me) happen to drop in.
And we all know why, don’t we? Because the shelves are packed with gin. You can’t move for the stuff. At some point in recent history they must have passed a law that decrees that wherever two or more people shall meet they shall set up a gin distillery and give it some quirky name like Silent Monkey or Bath Plug. And then, to distinguish it from all the other gins that taste like gin, they’ll flavour it with elderflowers or pomegranate or sea cucumber or something, so it’s not really gin any more, but everyone will still buy it because it’s called gin.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a G&T as much as the next person, but don’t complicate the pleasure by giving me limitless choice of the same thing. I yearn for the days when you could walk into a pub, say, “Gin and tonic please,” and they’d give you a gin and tonic. Simple. Now it’s, “Any particular gin?” “What tonic would you like with that?” “Cucumber or lemon, sir? Sir…? Oh, he’s gone.”
Of course, gin is just the latest in a line of drinks that have been marketed to death. Literally in some cases. Chardonnay anyone? Pinot Grigio? Prosecco has had the treatment, and last summer you couldn’t move for Aperol Spritz. Compared to sherry, these are mere whippersnappers, false pretenders to a tarnished crown. Sherry has history – ancient history. The Phoenicians brought it to the Jerez region of Spain over two thousand years ago. How do we know? Because the ancient travel writer Strabo saw fit to document it.
In the Middle Ages, Sherish was the Moorish name for Jerez (although it sounds more Connery than Moore, if you ask me), and that’s how it translated into the English ‘sherry’, as we imported it by the bucketload. Sherry travels well. Indeed, Ferdinand Magellan took it all the way round the world. Sir Francis Drake plundered thousands of barrels of it from Cadiz and unleashed them on Elizabethan London, capturing in the process the heart of one William Shakespeare, who waxed lyrical about it. By the 1840s, sherry made up 20% of the value of all Spanish exports, and most of it came our way.
So where did it all go wrong? How did this majestic beverage become the subject of mockery? Well, you could say it became too popular. People started meddling with the formula, the magic evaporated and pretty soon that Bristol Cream on your granny’s hostess trolley was the only bottle in town. Take note, you gin distillers!
It’s time to get back to basics, to rediscover the glory of sherry in its various moods. You might choose a dry fino, amontillado, manzanilla or oloroso, a sweet pale cream, or an ultra sweet Pedro Ximénez. Each has its moment – the perfect aperitif, a palate cleanser, the optimum accompaniment for cheese, Christmas pudding in a glass. Just saying the names is enough to make you take up the flamenco guitar and fly into a frenzy of rhythmic clapping. Imagine the atmosphere in your local if all those gin bottles were sherry!
Are you with me? Then join the campaign and beseech your publican to do the right thing. Make 2024 the year you say “Si” to sherry!
Chin chin!
