Miami Drink: Tasting Sherry, Recession-Era Wine of Choice, at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival

*by Chuck Ferrin*

**photo courtesy of WInes From Spain***

The Miami area is not always the easiest place to live.  Han Solo would have trouble with our traffic, and there’s no question that he would shoot Greedo first for a parking space.  Speaking of that fan-boy favorite scene, I can’t imagine a city more like the Mos Eiseley Cantina. With the plethora of languages, huddles of dubious characters and surly customer service, it’s enough to make us wonder why we would want to hang out in either spot.  But the answer is simple-for the drinks . . . and the weather doesn’t hurt.  Sure, Tatooine is a desert planet and Miami is practically a jungle, but both places stay warm and toasty while the rest of the universe is freezing like a tauntaun that stayed out too late.  Sitting with a mouthful of wine and food at the schwanky Loews Hotel, mentally whining to myself about how it was a little too hot for a long-sleeved shirt, I realized that the South Beach Wine and Food Festival was one of those perfect Miami moments.  Though I had just been robbed for valet parking after spending way too much time at a single stop light on Collins Avenue, it was all totally worth it. There really is no better place to enjoy a glass of wine in the middle of February.

This was my first go at the venerated festival, and I decided to pass on the Grand Tasting Tent and any other drinking cluster bomb.  I’ve found that these mass tastings, while thoroughly festive, end up being more like marathons of drunkenness rather than studies in gustatory enlightenment. With that in mind, I opted for more focused events called “Lifestyle Seminars”.

But I’ve got to say something about the name.  “Lifestyle” is one of those terms like “gourmet” and “freedom” that has become so general it can really apply to anything, like the BDSM community for example.  I would suggest something like “Wine and Food Tasting Classes”, but maybe that’s just too much verbiage.  Disregarding the categorical nomenclature, the three events that I attended were all engaging, informative and delectable.

My first seminar, “Sherry and Cheese Pairing”, started early Sunday morning and was hosted by Steve Olson and John Cuevas.  It was shamefully difficult to drag myself out of bed for a wine tasting at 10:30 am, but it was well worth the effort.  Being a frugal nerd, I was amped about this class, because sherry is possibly the best value in wine.  The tradition is ancient, the quality is high, the wines are often decades old and the prices are modest.  A killer bottle of sherry can still be had for less than $20, but there’s a catch-sherry can be a bit challenging for the modern palate.  The lighter styles of sherry are so yeasty, they taste like bread dough, and the darker styles of sherry are even more diverse and intense.  I’ve tasted an old Pedro Ximénez dessert sherry that reminded me of menthol cough drops mixed with a little prune juice.  That may not sound fun, but trust me, it was the ish.  This particular style of funk is what makes sherry one of the best accompaniments for food, especially cheese, which is really funked-up milk if you stop and think about it.

We were offered six different styles of sherry from five different houses, and they were presented in order from the most dry and light to the most sweet and dark:

-    Lustau Manzanilla, Reserva Papirusa
-    Harvey’s Fino
-    Sandeman Royal Esmeralda Fine Dry Amontillado VOS
-    Domecq Capuchino Palo Cortado VQRS
-    Lustau East India Solera
-    Osborne Pedro Ximénez 1827
The seven cheeses were of Spanish, Portuguese and French origin.  Most were made from raw milk in peak season and were presented from hard to soft:

-    Ros, Valencia,sheep’s milk
-    Aged Manchego, La Mancha, sheep’s milk
-   El Porfiao, Spain, sheep’s milk
-   Patacabra, Barcelona, goat’s milk
-    Époisses de Bourgogne, Burgundy, cow’s milk
-    Fourme d’Ambert, Auvergne, cow’s milk

Everything looked and smelled good to me, but I was really keen to get my first taste of a palo cortado.  This is the most precious style of sherry, because no bodega can set out to make one.  It only comes about by chance, and as Shakespeare reminds us, nothing pleaseth like rare accidents.

Domecq sherry aging in oak barrels or “botas.” /Wines from Spain

The more crisp styles of sherry, fino and amontillado, must be aged under flor, a protective layer of yeast that develops naturally only under precise conditions.  Sherry that does not have flor becomes exposed to air and oxidizes.  This results in a darker, richer wine called oloroso.  Unfortunately, there’s a trade-off, as fino and amontillado have more finesse, while oloroso has more power.  With palo cortado, you can have the best of both worlds, as it starts off under flor but then loses this covering over time.  No one knows why the flor disappears, but we do know that you can’t fake the flor.  Due to the demand for palo cortado, sherry producers try to blend amontillado and oloroso to duplicate its qualities, but there’s no mistaking the real deal.  If you want palo cortado, you just have to make a lot of sherry and cross your fingers.   That’s why I was cised when the hosts cracked a bottle of Domecq Capuchino Palo Cortado VQRS, and it happily lived up to my expectations.

But here’s the thing-the wine surprised me with its eccentricity.  Palo cortado is simultaneously crisp, refreshing and bright, as well as dark, rich and bold.  Both the nose and the palate were reminiscent of lemons, fresh herbs, nuts, dried fruit and caramel.  Imagine biting down on a raisin and discovering that it was entirely devoid of sweetness and still one of the best you’ve ever tasted. That’s the mystifying experience of palo cortado.

As good as it was by itself, this wine really hit the ball out of the park when paired with cheese.   Most wine and food make fast friends, because it’s just fun to stuff your face while copping a buzz.  A pairing becomes extra special when a certain sip of wine and a particular tidbit of food combine forces like Voltron to form a new, giant, almighty taste sensation.  In general, the lighter fino and manzanilla achieved this synergy with the hard cheeses, ros and manchego, whereas the darker amontillado and Lustau East India Solera were better with the soft and semi-soft cheeses, El Porfiao, Patacabra and Époisses.  Due to its transitional style, the palo cortado worked its magic with nearly everything.  If you are planning a wine and cheese tasting, and you want to impress your guests with something special, I can think of nothing more righteous than the Domecq Capuchino Palo Cortado VQRS.

Sherry and Cheese tasting at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival 2009 /Wines from Spain

And here’s a fact that you can drop for your guests-the “VQRS” designation means that the wine in the bottle is no less than 30 years-old.  Sherry is aged in a solera system that marries different vintages to give the wines added complexity.  While this means there is no true vintage for sherry, 30 years is still a remarkably long time for the youngest wine in any blend.  There is a downside to the Domecq Palo Cortado-it’s not cheap or easy to find.  You may have to buy this one on-line and pay for it in British pounds. Nevertheless, it would still be worth it for a special occasion, and a bottle should start around $70.

While I loved this wine and can barely desist from singing its praises, there was one cheese it could not handle-the blue Fourme d’Ambert.  Blue cheese can be particularly tricky to pair with wine, because it’s extra stinky.  While the palo cortado did have some of richness of a darker sherry, I found that it needed some sweetness to balance the funky mold.  That’s when the Osborne Pedro Ximénez 1827 showed its mettle.  Our hosts suggested that it was too sweet to pair with any of the cheeses, and that it should be enjoyed at the end of the seminar as a dessert.  I have to disagree, not only because I love super-sweeties, but also because the Fourme d’Ambert demanded a counterpoint that was equally Lincoln-Hawk-Over-The-Top.

Pedro Ximénez sherry, often abbreviated as PX, is made from grapes of the same name that have been allowed to ripen on the vine for a long period of time.  They are then hand-picked and dried like raisins.  The resulting juice is concentrated, intense and very sweet.  The Osborne PX 1827 was reminiscent of a cornucopia of dried fruits, from the expected raisins, to prunes, dates and figs, with a big dollop of caramel-vanilla sauce and toasted almonds on top.  This decadence in a glass would be a perfect pairing for any wedge of super-smelly cheese, and it shouldn’t cost more than $20.  Considering the steep prices for other classic dessert wines like Sauternes, you’re practically stealing this wine from the maker.

That’s the great thing about sherry-aside from the palo cortado, all of these bottles should cost you less than $50.  In fact, most should be less than $20.  Consider that the Sandeman Royal Esmeralda Fine Dry Amontillado VOS is no less than twenty years-old, or that Robert Parker gave the Lustau East India Solera 94 points, and you’ll realize that for quality to price, sherry can’t be beat.

During the tasting, I was sitting next to one of the only other media writers, and we both agreed that this had to be one of the best in the show.  You got the sense that the presenters really cared about the subject matter and the attendees were there not just to get hammered, but to enjoy the experience and learn about sherry.  All of the selections were spot on and some were transcendental.  My only minor criticism is that the cheese played more of a supporting role, and so I don’t have as much detail to offer on this subject.  But honestly, that’s OK with me.  Artisanal cheese it hot right now, and people are searching long and hard for their favorite slice of curd.  Sherry is in a different boat.  It once enjoyed prominence as one of the world’s most treasured wines, and now an awesome bottle full of super-old  juice is mere pennies compared to a craptastic, oaked-up Chardonnay. While it may seem unfair in the great scheme of things, it’s a boon for smart shoppers.  In this new Bernie Madoff Era we now live in, value is everything, and sherry has that in spades.  Maybe it will make a comeback, but hopefully not too much, because I still want to be able to drink it.