Japanese-style Food, and Fino Sherry

I've been trying to cook Japanese food lately, and I've succeeded in cooking Japanese-style food. It's amazing how far you can get with a couple of miso pastes, some kombu (dried kelp) and dried shaved bonito flakes, some mirin and shoyu.

Here is one recipe that my daughters and I have been enjoying - Japanese-style stew with beef and potatoes. Disarmingly simple, and very satisfying, especially in this cold weather. You are essentially braising beef and potatoes in a mixture of Japanese sweet rice wine and shoyu. Here's what you do:

1) Watch the Shogun miniseries in it's entirety. This is 10 hours of your life well spent. And it gets you into the right frame of mind, as a foreigner attempting to do something Japanese.
2) Slice against the grain 1 pound of flank steak (but you can use other similar cuts) into pieces 1 inch thick, but leaving them the width of the steak. Brown the meat and remove from the pot.
3) Cut a large onion in half and slice it with the grain into long thin strips.
4) Peel two russet potatoes and cut them into chunky half moons, chunky enough to hold together in a braise. 
5) Peel a decent sized knob of very fresh ginger and grate it finely.
6) Mix together a quarter cup of good quality mirin with a quarter cup good quality shoyu, and 1 cup of good quality hand-poured water. This is the ratio that I like, but you can add more shoyu or mirin - they are strong flavors though and this combination is nicely balanced.
7) Saute the onions in the beefy pot, but don't brown them. After they have cooked for a few minutes, add the ginger and mix well.
8) Add the braising liquid and bring to a simmer.
9) Add the beef and the potatoes, bring to a boil and immediately turn down the heat to a simmer.
10) Cover with a Japanese drop-lid, or if like me, you don't have one, cover the pot with a damp piece of parchment paper and a tight-fitting lid. Every 15 minutes or so move the stew around the pot to make sure that all the meat and potatoes have a turn being submerged.
11) When the meat is very tender, maybe 90 minutes, turn off the heat and let the whole thing rest for 10 minutes or so.
12) Top with scallions and serve over rice.

Would it surprise you if I tell you that this dish is fantastic with Fino Sherry? A lot of Japanese food is great with Fino Sherry. There is the umami factor - Japanese home cooking and Sherry both have it, and they compliment and elevate each other tremendously. But it's more than that. As I understand it, one of the ideas in Japanese cooking is to bring out the essence of the ingredient, to accentuate the beef's beefiness, or the radish's radishiness, if you will. Fino Sherry, with its very pure chalky saline and savory flavors somehow enhances the purity of the flavors in Japanese dishes.

One night I drank Emilio Hidalgo's beautiful Fino called La Panesa with this dish, and I swear to you it was as good a pairing as any I've had in a very long time.

On another evening I made a simple Savoy cabbage, daikon radish, and pork dish, simmered again in a light mixture of mirin, shoyu, and water. First of all, this is seriously delicious. My young daughters were happily eating Savoy cabbage, that's how good it was. There was half a bottle of La Panesa leftover, and surprise surprise, it was a wonderful pairing.

Tonight I made tofu with snap peas, carrots, and onions simmered in a mixture of red and light miso pastes, mirin, and water. Again, the daughters lapped it up - these girls like the savory.

And I drank the old reliable Valdespino Inocente, a spirited little half-bottle. I'm telling you, if you're into Sherry and you haven't tried it with Japanese (or Japanese-style) food, you really should.

One day I will learn to make oden like this. Probably not, actually. But at least I had the sense at this restaurant to pair it with the very grand La Bota de Manzanilla No 22. As Morgan Freeman said at the beginning of the movie Se7en, "This isn't over - there are going to be more of these."

Drinking an Aged Fino Sherry.

The other night I was lucky enough to drink a fino Sherry sourced from Bodegas Valdespino, one of the finest Sherry producers. There are two things that make this wine very special. Firstly, it was selected from special barrels within the Inocente solera by Jesús Barquín and Eduardo Ojeda, two-thirds of the team behind Equipo Navazos. And Ojeda is the capataz, or cellar master, at Valdespino (and La Guita), and so you have to figure that the two of them chose interesting and very fine barrels. Secondly, it was bottled in April of 2007.

This wine had an average age of something like 10-12 years when it was bottled, but now it has aged in Peter Liem's cellar since release - it's almost 5 years in bottle. The common wisdom about fino Sherry is that you drink it when it's young, before it looses its freshness. There are some fino Sherries that probably should be consumed pretty quickly after release - those that are bottled unfiltered, and that still have small bits of flor floating about. The presence of flor makes it possible for the wine to continue to develop, to change in some way, and producers typically urge us to drink these wines within 6 months. I've heard Antonio Flores of Barbadillo Gonzales Byass say this about his palmas, for example. I do not have any personal experience cellaring a wine like this, so I cannot agree or disagree.

Regarding high quality fino Sherry, however, wines that have been lightly filtered - the common wisdom is wrong. You've read this here before, I know. The more personal experience I gain drinking fino with bottle age, the more I am convinced that this is a wine I am just starting to get to know. Like any other fine wine, it has an essential character, but it evolves in the cellar and shows differently as it ages.

Equipo Navazos la Bota de Fino Nº 7 was a wonderful old bottle. It was Peter's very last one, and it was generous of him to share it over dinner at Aburiya Kinnosuke in midtown. And if you haven't yet had Sherry with Japanese izakaya-style food, you really should try it. The fino needed a little air but it opened up beautifully, and at this stage in its life showed rich and mouth-watering notes of butter and toffee, although I was able to sense the delicate sea-sat mineral undertone. Peter smiled when I told him this, and explained that La Bota Nº 2 (also a fino sourced from the Inocente Solera) and 7 are very different from the current release, Nº35. They were brawnier and bigger upon release - Jesus was interested in making a bigger wine back then, I guess. With time in the bottle, though, I experienced Nº 7 as a delicate wine. Rich, but delicate.

We drank this next to my last bottle of La Bota de Fino-Amontillado Nº 24, bottled in October of 2010. This is a fantastic wine, Peter calls it "probably the best PX ever made." I've been fortunate enough to drink a lot of this wine, and it has changed since it was first released. On this night it was bright, energetic, and focused, and entirely delicious. What shocked me was how young it seemed, next to Nº 7.

There is a lot of life in these wines, plenty of potential for development in the cellar. It is my goal to be better about actually saving a few bottles. It's hard though because the wines are so delicious from the very start. Note to self: get some fino self control.

Sherryfest

In NYC a lot has changed with Sherry in the past year. Sherry is lovable now, and this is a great thing.

 Emilio Hidalgo Fino Especial La Panesa and Jamon Iberico at Palo Cortado in Brooklyn. 

Any restaurant with modern or hipster ambitions has Sherry on the wine list. Wines that previously were difficult or impossible to buy here are now readily available. For example, almost the whole line of Valdespino Sherries wines are now imported by Polaner.

In Jerez you can walk into any small grocery store and buy a 750 ml bottle of Inocente for maybe 8 Euros. Inocente has only been available (when it is available, which was rare) in 375 ml bottles. Tio Diego, the delicious young Amontillado and the excellent Palo Cortado called Viejo CP were unavailable here, except when the intrepid Joe Salamone at Crush would find a way to sell a few bottles. Now these and other Valdespino Sherries can easily be purchased at many stores. And let me tell you that there is nothing like a 750 of Inocente - you should try one.

Fernando de Castilla's Sherries are now imported too, by David Bowler. The line of Antique Sherries is excellent - my favorite is the Palo Cortado, but they are all worth trying.

And my friend Peter Liem's new Sherry book will be released in less than a month! He wrote the book with Jesus Barquin of Equipo Navazos, and it promises to become one of the absolutely definitive pieces of writing about the region and the wines.

To top it all off, Peter and Rosemary Gray have created what will be the largest and most important Sherry tasting the Unites States has ever seen. It is called Sherryfest. There will be a grand tasting on Monday October 21st (you have to register and reserve a spot if you want to go, demand is large enough so that they have to be serious about this). There will also be seminars where you can taste with cellar masters, and dinners at great restaurants that feature the Sherries of selected producers.

This is a very big deal for the Sherry industry, for Peter and Rosemary, and for us as consumers. Congratulations to Peter for his groundbreaking new book, and to Peter and Rosemary for creating Sherryfest! I'll see you there...

Whoa!

You know how sometimes you eat a wonderful dish or drink a great bottle with friends and although you want to share the joy, you just never seem to work it into a post on your blog? Me too, I know exactly how you feel. Here are some things from the past few months that I haven't managed to write about, but are worth sharing:

Earlier in the summer in a Japanese restaurant I ate this small appetizer plate of young bamboo shoots. They were probably simmered first, or maybe parboiled, and dressed with a Japanese herb the name of which I do not know. And the rest of the dressing - I have no idea. I have felt frustrated that I didn't ask more about the dish, but I didn't - that's that. I still think of it though because whoa, it was so good. Next year early summer I will go back and in general, I will eat more bamboo.

I know I just mentioned Bodegas Tradición Palo Cortado last week, but that was a glass pour at a restaurant. Thinking that the wine is not imported to the US (the Oloroso and Amontillado are, but not the Palo Cortado for some reason), I brought a bottle home in my luggage last October. I opened it when some one was over for dinner, and then had a small glass every day for a over a week - you don't need a lot in one sitting. The wine is great, my favorite of the Bodegas Tradición wines, but it takes a few days to unfurl after the bottle is open. There is almost none of this wine in the US, and I'm telling you, if you like Palo Cortado comprised of very old wines, you should try this. It's amazing in it's richness and depth, and whoa - it has so much finesse. A bottle will run you $90 but think for a moment before you say "no way." You're going to have 10 glasses minimum, so it actually becomes cheap considering what it is you are drinking. Crush has 3 bottles as of this writing, for the few and the bold among you.

A generous person brought this bottle of 2000 Philipponnat Clos des Goisses to a dinner, just to get things started properly. This was a Barolo dinner and there were a few blue chip wines on the table, including wines by Giuseppe Mascarello and Francesco Rinaldi. The Clos des Goisses was the wine of the night for me. It clearly showed the ripeness of this very fine vineyard, and also its elegance and detail of flavor. Whoa, a special treat.

Recently I decided to drink red wine while having dinner at home, a rarity these days. I opened my last bottle of 2007 Filliatreau Saumur-Champigny La Grand Vignole, and it benefited well from a scant few years in the cellar. I love this wine with a couple years on it, particularly in the vintages that are not 2005 or 2009 hot. Whoa, the 2007 is in a great spot right now, very fresh but there are prominent leathery and earthy notes too, and the minerality is strong on the finish. A lovely under $20 wine and a great candidate for mid-term cellaring.

This is bluefish crudo. Whoa, raw bluefish. I ate this not long ago on Martha's Vineyard at a dinner hosted by Chris Fischer, the former chef and current farmer who I believe sells produce to several hip Brooklyn restaurants, including the Andrew Tarlow joints. Anyway, bluefish is oily and very strongly flavored and isn't something that I think of eating raw. But this fish had been caught earlier in the day and it was beautiful, simply served with lemon, olive oil, salt, and herbs - full of fresh and complex flavors. Memorable.

Peter came for dinner one night and brought these two 375 ml bottles of Manzanilla: Equipo Navazos 'I Think' and Valdespino Deliciosa. Drinking these bottles next to one another, whoa - that is a particularly interesting experience in that it highlights the impact of filtration on Manzanilla Sherry. Deliciosa is bottled from a solera in the great Sanlucar bodega called Miseracordia. 'I Think' is a blend of selected wines from that same solera, including barrels from earlier criaderas. It is bottled unfiltered. I think both are great wines and drinking them together like this was fascinating. Deliciosa has a fineness that 'I Think' does not achieve, and 'I Think has a complexity and depth' that Deliciosa does not achieve. You can perform this little experiment yourself for less than $40 at Tinto Fino, the shop devoted to Spanish wines in the East Village. They are the only retailer to carry 'I Think,' and they also carry Deliciosa.

A friend had a BBQ the other night and one of his pals brought this fine old bottle of 1987 Quintarelli Valpolicella to share. Whoa! I've had Quintarelli maybe three times in my life and this is by far the oldest bottle. It was wonderful wine. So much to say, and although much of it was in a language that is foreign to me, there is no mistaking the quality here. The wine is detailed and expressive and fresh as a daisy at 25 years old. After some time I began to notice what I thought might be dried grape flavors. Should that be - isn't the Valpolicella the dry wine in the stable? I contacted my buddy Jeremy who sent me an informed and amusing set of messages about the wine and the idea that dried grapes could have made their way in there. I could almost hear him laughing as he discussed this, and it seemed to me as though he was saying that there are rules against this, but who knows what really goes on sometimes. "The Valpolicella can be made with up to 70% ripasso wine, wine that has been aged on the lees and solids of Amarone" Jeremy wrote. "So the answer is yes, although not directly." Jeremy also said that wine originally destined to become Amarone was blended into the Valpolicella in some vintages. And as he said, "who's complaining?" 

Lastly, I just want to share the wonder of this old bottle of Cream Sherry. Not old as in old wines at bottling. Old as in Whoa, I found it in my parents' liquor cabinet and my mother maintains that she bought it over 10 years ago and periodically uses it for cooking. It has not been refrigerated in that time and it was a little more than half-full. I had to try it. It was actually not so bad, I enjoyed a glass. I swear, I'm not kidding.

Macharnudo Alto - Exploring the Terroir Stamp of a Vineyard in Sherry.

When I think of terroir, I invariably think within the Burgundian model where each vineyard produces wines that are different from those of its neighboring vineyards. I'm willing to bet that most of us think of terroir in approximately those terms. There are several places in the wine world that do not adhere to this model, though, and the Sherry Triangle is one of them.

When I think of terroir in Sherry I think of the white chalky soils called albariza, I think of the peculiar and wonderful smell and taste of flor, I think of the salty air in Sanlucar's Manzanillas and of the yeasty tang of Jerez's Finos. I think of intense heat and winds. Especially now that I have visited the region, I think of the beautiful old buildings, or bodegas, where barrels of wine age in elaborate soleras. Each bodega is unique in terms of airflow, temperature, humidity, and many other variables, and I've heard people say that the Bodega itself is a unique terroir. I do not for a moment doubt the truth in this idea.

Where is the vineyard in all of this? There is little or no emphasis placed on the vineyard in Sherry. This was not always the case, and Peter Liem, America's foremost Sherry expert, has often spoken about how the best vineyards in the area have long been recognized as such, and how they once played a prominent role in the understanding of Sherry wines. As I am sure he will discuss in his forthcoming book called Sherry, Manzanilla and Montilla, a collective decision was made a long time ago in the region to focus on producing high quantities of decent wine for the mass market, as opposed to making wines of the highest quality. Even today, although we are in the middle of a huge resurgence of interest in Sherry wines, much of what is available is mass market wine that is decent but not special. The market still has a long and winding road to recovery.

Is there a terroir stamp of the vineyard in the Sherry region? As Peter would say, there is little empirical evidence for this. Almost no one in the region is making single vineyard wines, and comparing vineyards is therefore almost impossible. "Since no one has cared for 60 years, Miraflores for example has not been vinified and aged in solera in the same place as Macharnudo Alto," Peter said. "It would take quite a while to do this, even if the investment were made."

Although there is no way to compare vineyard terroirs right now, it is possible to very deeply explore at least one vineyard, the site called Macharnudo Alto. Macharnudo Alto is a parcel within Marcharnudo, one of the four great pagos of the region. A pago is something like a vineyard district - an area containing several named parcels. I recently had the great pleasure to attend a dinner featuring a slew of wines made from Macharnudo Alto. Peter Liem conceived of this dinner and put it on with the support of Rosemary Gray of RS Productions NYC.

 Peter explained the idea behind the dinner:

I have been wanting to do a specific sherry tasting for over a year now, involving an in-depth examination of the vineyard of Macharnudo Alto. Macharnudo is one of the four great pagos, or vineyard districts, that lie to the north and west of Jerez, and while it is composed of many individual vineyard sites, the most celebrated is that of Macharnudo Alto, which is the highest in altitude and the one considered to have the purest albariza soils.

We are fortunate in that not only is Macharnudo Alto one of the great historical sites of the sherry region, it also belongs, in part, to one of the greatest sherry bodegas currently in existence, Valdespino, who has been making single-vineyard sherries from Macharnudo Alto since at least the middle of the nineteenth century. The result is an array of wines that offer a multi-faceted expression of a legendary terroir...

The Macharnudo pago is perhaps 800 hectares, the Marcharnudo Alto parcel much smaller than that, and of that Valdespino owns 56 hectares. From these vines come excellent wines that you really should get to know if you are interested in Sherry (if you haven't tried them already). I'm talking about Inocente, the very fine Fino, Tio Diego, the unique and wonderful Amontillado, Viejo CP, the great Palo Cortado, and finally Cardenal, the rare and regal very old Palo Cortado that is surely one of the finest wines in all of the region. On a recent hot and muggy night a group of Sherry lovers congregated at Terroir TriBeCa to drink these and other wines from Macharnudo Alto, and although I cannot say that I came from this with a clear understanding of the terroir of Macharnudo Alto as it relates to other parcels in Jerez, I can tell you that the wines are reliably excellent. Here are some notes and thoughts:

Valdespino Fino Inocente. We drank two versions of this great wine; one recent bottling from October of 2011, and one that was bottled in January of 2006 and aged in a cellar since then. That's right, aged Inocente. Well made biologically-aged wines are capable of improving in the cellar and drinking these two wines next to one another was a startling experience. I very much like the young wine and would happily drink it at any hour of the day, but the version that spent 6.5 years in bottle...that wine was amazing. This is not the first time I've had this experience, and it reminds me to put bottles of this great wine in the cellar. What's odd about the wine with some bottle age is that it seems to follow an aging curve that is the inverse of what we see in most wines. The older wine shows a more prominent fruit character! Who can explain these things. Anyway, Inocente is a fabulous wine and I am excited to hear that Valdespino's new importer Polaner will offer 750 ml bottles in addition to the 375's that we've seen here. Inocente out of a 750 is a very delicious thing.

Equipo Navazos La Bota de Fino Macharnudo Alto Nº 15, Nº 18, and Nº 27. These wines are created by selecting from barrels in the Inocente solera at Valdespino. Although the idea is to make a different wine each time, these wines are similar in that they tend to be richer and fuller in body than Inocente.

I like each of them, but on this night Nº 18 was the one I preferred. It had an energy and a linear focus that I enjoyed. You can almost see this when comparing the appearance of the three wines in the above photo. I must say that of all of the Equipo Navazos wines that I have tasted, this series is the one that I am least enamored of and I think it's because I cannot help myself but to compare them with Inocente as I drink them.

Amontillado Tio Diego. Tio Diego is unique as an Amontillado because it is so recently removed from flor. It is essentially a biologically aged wine that has spent only 5 or 6 years aging oxidatively. I always thought that Tio Diego is a continuation of the Inocente solera, that Tio Diego is what happens to the wines in the solera level of Inocente if they continue to age for a few years. But on this night I learned something new about this lovely wine. Tio Diego is its own solera, and Inocente does not feed it. The young wines that replenish the youngest barrels in the Inocente solera - they are the same young wines that replenish the youngest barrels in the Tio Diego solera. But after that they follow their on course. In any case, Tio Diego is a delicious Amontillado, one in which the lactic and tangy echo of flor is still quite evident. It is a wine that like all of the brown Sherries I know, shows best a few days after opening.

Palo Cortado Viejo C.P. This Palo Cortado solera is fed with barrels from the Inocente and Tio Diego soleras, barrels that the cellar master deems unusual in some way, not well-suited for making Fino or Amontillado. I tasted a version of this wine at the bodega from a barrel but had never had this wine from a bottle with a meal. It showed beautifully, I think more perfectly than any other on this evening. I loved the orange oil I was getting on the nose and the compelling depth and complexity of the palate. It was incredibly delicious with a well-prepared plate of thinly sliced roast pork and rosemary. C.P. stands for Calle Ponce, by the way, the name of a street where the Valdespino bodega that houses this solera was once located.

Palo Cortado Cardenal VORS. The wines here average 60-70 years of age at bottling and the Viejo C.P. solera feeds this solera. I find it hard to describe the aromas and flavors of Cardenal. It is so intense and complex and it develops over many days after the bottle is open. It is a combination of great richness and complexity from the concentrated old wines, and also of great finesse and detail, characteristics that just might be the best way to think of the terroir stamp of Macharnudo Alto.

Sapidity

You know how when you're drinking a good Sherry, how one of the things that's so good about it is that strong streak of acidity that runs right down the spine of the wine? I've always appreciated that about Sherry, particularly Finos and Manzanillas, the bright acidity that enlivens the oxidized wine.

Everything in the above paragraph is factually incorrect, and I refuse to believe that I am the only one who thought those things about Sherry. Doesn't it seem like an acidic wine? And obviously it's an oxidized wine, right?

No! And no!

I remember the time I was drinking some or other Sherry with Peter Liem (whose much-anticipated book on Sherry will be out soon), and I told him how great I thought the acidity was, and how fresh the wine felt even though it was oxidized. He smiled at me the way one might smile at a 3-year old who is learning to put her pants on by herself, and told me that actually, Sherry is a very low acid wine. And that biologically aged Sherries (Fino style wines) are actually reductive wines that are protected from oxygen by a layer of flor.

Palomino is the dominant grape grown in Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa Maria. It is a low acid grape, and the very hot climate probably doesn't do anything to help preserve whatever natural acidity is in the grape. I recently learned that Sherry wines, by law, must achieve a certain pH level and therefore have to have acidity added in most cases!

So what is it that gives good Fino style Sherry wines that acidic feeling? I asked this question while tasting with Peter and Eduardo Ojeda, cellar master at Valdespino and La Guita.

"Sapidity, it is sapidity," Eduardo said. Peter agreed.

Here is what the interweb says is the definition of the word sapid:

--Perceptible to the sense of taste; having flavor. b. Having a strong pleasant flavor; savory. 2. Pleasing to the mind; engaging.

Here is another, this time a "medical definition:"

--affecting the organs of taste : possessing flavor and especially a strong agreeable flavor.

Okay, I don't think that Eduardo and Peter meant exactly this. Eduardo put his fingers to the sides of his cheeks, where they meet the back of the jaw bone as he said this. I think he meant the sensation of mouthwatering-ness, the idea that something in Fino style Sherry produces a vibrant sensation in the mouth the way acidity does, something that causes that tingling mouthwatering feeling. What is this thing, that Eduardo and Peter are calling sapidity? I honestly have no idea. One of wine's mysteries, I would guess. 

I was reminded of this recently when drinking a glass of 2011 Domaine Les Fouques Côtes de Provence Blanc Cuvée de L'Aubigue, $14, Imported by Fruit of the Vines. I know I've been harping on these Fouques wines lately, but with good reason. $14 is what you pay if you buy one bottle. If you put together a case you're talking about $12.60, and tell me honestly - how many truly interesting wines are there at that price nowadays (in NYC, anyway)? Mssr. Asimov has been saying for a while now that $20-25 is the value sweet spot, and I agree completely in the sense that there aren't so many great values at lower price points. The Fouques wines are David Lillie direct imports at Chambers Street, and that's why the prices are low - no "middle man." Take advantage, my friends - the wines are full of character and are completely delicious. I've not had the red wine, but the rosés and the white are really lovely. This white is just so correct and tasty, with slightly smoky lemon and seashell aromas, and a balanced and energetic palate. It would be great with seafood of all sorts, and I imagine it is versatile enough to do well with all sorts of other warm weather fare.

Anyway...At first I was worried about the white wine when I saw 14% alcohol on the label. Would the wine be balanced? Turns out the answer is yes, although the wine doesn't feel particularly acidic to me. It is mainly Rolle, also known as Vermentino, with about 10% each of Ugni Blanc and Clairette. I don't know, but I doubt that these grapes are low acid grapes like Palomino. Could be. The climate in Provence, however, is hot hot hot, and many producers nowadays have trouble keeping potential alcohol at a reasonable level if they allow the grapes to hang long enough to reach phenolic ripeness. Perhaps even a modest hang time in that climate can result in lower acidity.


Yet this wine still has a mouth watering feeling, and I felt it immediately, and particularly on day 2. What is this about? Sapidity? I'm willing to go with that.

Inocente...with Bottle Age

The other night, at the end of a lovely blind wine dinner (more on that another time) I decided to open one last bottle for my guests, a bottle of Valdespino Inocente. I grabbed a bottle from my wine fridge, and as soon as I began pouring the wine I noticed that it was unusual for Inocente. A little cloudy, almost. Well not exactly cloudy, but different in appearance from all of the other Inocente that I've had.

Inocente is a wonderful wine, one of my absolute favorite Fino Sherries. But this was a particularly wonderful bottle, showing such finesse, such a mellow harmony, such lovely articulation. Was something special about this bottle?

Yes, as it turns out. My friend Peter stores a few bottles of wine in my fridge, and this was his bottle of Inocente - I grabbed the wrong bottle. And Peter's wine was special in that it was bottled in December of 2008 - it has aged for over three years in bottle.

The back of a bottle of Inocente has a code that reveals the bottling date. "L083532" means that the wine was bottled in 2008 on the 353rd day of that year - December 18th (it was a leap year), from bottling line number 2. Had I known how to read this code, I might not have opened my friend's carefully aged bottle of Inocente. This is, after all, something that I would guess almost no one else has - aged Inocente is a rare thing.

Many people think that biologically aged Sherries, Finos and Manzanillas, for example, should not be aged in bottle. This idea probably arose because in this country the Fino style wines that have been most readily available in fact do not stay fresh for very long. But there is a renewed interest in Sherry, and there are more wines available now. Some of them are wines that improve with bottle age, and Valdespino Inocente is one such wine.

It's funny to think of a Sherry like Inocente as a candidate for the cellar. Unlike most white wines that are bottled within a year or two of vinification, Inocente is already aged when we buy it - it's a wine that ages for 8 or so years in the solera before bottling. But like many fine wines, Inocente mellows with bottle age, achieves a greater harmony and depth of aroma and flavor, expresses itself in a more profound way.

I knew about this idea, and I know also that Jesus Barquin and Eduardo Ojeda of Equipo Navazos say that their biologically aged Sherries should be cellared for at least a year or two before drinking. I've tried this with some La Bota bottles, with good results. But until this night when I opened the wrong bottle of Inocente, Peter's aged bottle, I had never had Inocente with any bottle age. It turns out that with good storage, the results are well worth the effort and I will definitely try to recreate this experience by socking away a few bottles of my own.

A Dinner Featuring Previously Unavailable and Utterly Brilliant Sherry Wines

Not long ago Joe Salamone and Levi Dalton put together a Sherry dinner at the wonderful Prune on the lower east side, and I was lucky enough to attend. Peter Liem was there too, and he indirectly helped to make this happen, as last summer Peter pointed Joe in the right direction when Joe visited Jerez. Joe drank some wines that he loved, some of which were not available in New York. He decided to import them to NYC so the rest of us can buy them. On this night Joe wanted to share some of these finds with a few friends, lucky us. This was a merry situation, we were feeling the love. Good friends, good food, and absolutely world class wines, wines that until recently were unavailable here. Joe and Levi opened the brown wines at least a day in advance and they showed incredibly well, the wines were stunning as a group.

Sherry is far more versatile with food than is commonly thought. I think that we in this country are still familiarizing ourselves with dry Sherry, and we tend to think that Fino style wines are for garlicky shrimp and other tapas. Fino wines go well with all sorts of food, actually. And brown Sherries - Palo Cortado, Amontillado, and Oloroso - I don't think there is a stereotypical pairing idea here because these wines are still so new to most of us. The brown Sherries we drank on this night, these are Sherries that can complement even the richest of meat dishes, as we proved to ourselves at this dinner.

Here were some of the highlights for me:

We drank Valdespino Amontillado Tio Diego, a great wine that is quite unusual as an Amontillado in that it shows a very pronounced Flor character - buttery like a Fino. Tio Diego is what happens when Valdespino Fino Inocente becomes an Amontillado and then ages for a bit longer. This is a young and fresh Amontillado, it is refreshing and delicious, not expensive at all, and in Jerez it's everywhere - on grocery store shelves. Frustrating not to be able to buy it here. But now in NYC, finally, you might be able to buy this wine at Crush, as Joe is bringing it in.

We then drank the Fernando de Castilla Antique Palo Cortado. This is just a beautiful wine. Focus and intensity, grace, detailed aromas and flavors, and a satisfying and complex finish. Pure pleasure, and improves over several days open. This wine goes so well with basically anything on the table. At this dinner, I loved it with shrimp in anchovy butter, and also with thinly sliced roast pork and kale.

We drank Valdespino Palo Cortado VORS Cardenal, a fine old Sherry that represents the end of the line for Inocente - it contains wines that long ago were part of the Inocente solera before the cellar master selected them out to become Palo Cortado.

We also drank Valdespino Amontillado VORS Coliseo, an equally rare and fantastic old Sherry that begins its life as a Manzanilla, actually. Imagine going to a dinner where you drink DRC Richebourg and La Tâche. That's what we drank, but in Sherry they're called Cardenal and Coliseo. These are such grand old wines and trying to describe them by naming aromas or flavors is silly. For me, they are show-stoppers, wines that make the table go quiet for a while as people take in what it is that's in the glass. Wines that achieve the pinnacle of complexity and character and deliciousness, things that you should find a way to taste, the way you should read Shakespeare's sonnets at some point in your life.

They were brilliant with an amazing dish of braised short ribs and Yorkshire pudding, something that used to be on the menu at Prune a while back. Braised short ribs and Yorkshire pudding...that's a rich plate of food, and I found these two grand old Sherries complemented it perfectly. Honestly, even though these are expensive in an absolute sense, maybe $140 for a 375 ml bottle, Cardenal and Coliseo are worth every penny. They are wines that expand and improve for a week after opening and you only need a small bit at a time, so your pleasure is spread over many evenings.

We also drank a vintage Sherry. That's right, a vintage Sherry. The 1975 Bodegas Tradición Oloroso. Imagine that - the solera system is part of what makes these wines so great, and here is a Sherry wine that never sees a solera. It is vinified and put in barrels, and that's it, as a wine would be in most of the world. I had a few sips of this rare wine at the Bodega in October, but it was at here at this dinner with this food when I understood its charms. This wine had such impeccable balance and harmony, and such clarity and focus. And although its been aged in barrels and exposed to oxygen without Flor to protect it for almost 40 years, it had no rough edges, not at all. Pure class, all silk, just amazing.

Valdespino Moscatel Toneles is, with Cardenal and Coliseo, the third wonder of the Valdespino Bodegas. There is one barrel of this wine in the solera row, another in the first criadera, and so on. There is very little of the wine and it is very old. Many serious Sherry devotees can tell you about why it is so special, and although I enjoyed drinking it, I will admit that I do not yet understand the wine and cannot easily differentiate between the old black sweet Sherries. i know there is something to it, I just haven't figured it out yet...

Keep your eyes open for these wines as they should be available here and there, whereas previously you had to go abroad to buy them. This was a truly amazing dinner and reminded me again that at this point in my drinking experience, I think that great Sherry is as great as wine can be.

Sherry Bodega Visits - Some Highlights

Instead of trying to write about individual visits, I thought it would be fun to summarize a bit and share some highlights.

Emilio Hidalgo was my first visit to a Sherry Bodega. I find it hard to remember the details of a first visit - my senses are always so overwhelmed by the newness of it all. A few things stick out in my mind, however, when I remember the Hidalgo visit. Fernando Hidalgo was our guide, and he and Peter caught up a bit as we walked though the courtyard and into the Bodega - Peter had last been in Jerez in May. The first wine that Fernando poured for us was the very special old Fino called La Panesa, and as he was about to draw wine from a barrel he said "Wait, this is the barrel you tasted last time, Peter. We should taste another barrel."

This is impressive. There are obviously many barrels of La Panesa and to remember from which one a rather quiet journalist tasted many months prior...well, it shows an attention to detail and an immersion in one's work that I think is reflected in the wines in general. We tasted several barrels and then walked out of one Bodega and into another.

We passed these tools hanging on the wall. In order to respect Fernando's privacy, I'm not supposed to discuss here what these are actually used for, but I can tell you that it has nothing to do with making wine.*

These old barrel parts lay in a courtyard outside of another Hidalgo Bodega. Between this and the tools above, I began to feel as though I better behave myself at Bodegas Emilio Hidalgo.

In the tasting room we sampled several wines from bottle, including the miraculous old Amontillado called El Tresillo. How cool is that old label? This is one of many great wines I drank that is not available in the US, to my knowledge, a real shame.

Bodegas Tradición is barely over 10 years old, very new for a Sherry producer. The wines, however, are much older. An old Bodega along with wines of very high quality was purchased by a group including billionaire Joaquin Rivero Valcare. Here is a blog post that describes this story in more detail.

We walked through the facilities and I was fascinated by the guy wax-sealing the bottles.

I suppose this is something that happens at wineries all over the world, but it was nice to realize that every bottle of wine that leaves Tradición is sealed in exactly this way.

This is a paper filter. They are stacked together, separated by porous plastic, and this is what some producers use to filter their wines.

I was surprised to learn that this is among the most gentle of filtering techniques. How could that be gentle, wine having to work its way through many layers of plastic and something that feels sort of like paper mâché? Everything is relative, I guess.

Before going to the tasting room to sample the wines, we visited the museum. Yes, that's right, there is a museum in the Bodega, filled with master works owned by Mr. Rivero Valcare. The above tile painting is by Picasso at age 8.

We tasted Tradición's four Sherries, a 1975 vintage Oloroso, and their brandies too. I like these wines very much, particularly the Amontillado and the Palo Cortado - another wine that is not available in the US.

Peter already described the incredible tasting of the Palmas at González Byass. Another highlight for me at Byass was tasting a barrel of Amontillado wine of indeterminate age, but at least 100 years old. The wine was undrinkable, and Antonio Flores said as much before we tasted it. After enough time in barrel, a wine takes on so much tannin from the wood that it becomes difficult to drink. That said, this wine could be bottled and sold as perfume.

I also learned here to rid myself of preconceived notions about the value of mass produced Sherries like Tio Pepe. I'm not saying that I'm stocking up on Tio Pepe, but it is wrong to think that this is bad wine - it is not. González Byass is a grand old Bodega and they have the resources to make very high quantities of Tio Pepe, and quality is consistent. There are other basic Finos that I much prefer, but I would gladly drink Tio Pepe if those are not available, and I think it stacks up pretty well against most of the world's $12 wine.

Fernando de Castilla is a small Bodega making high end Sherries. Jan Petterson is a Norwegian who worked for decades at Osborne, and left to take over this gem of a place. I was struck by the fact that he would not pour us samples of his Antique Fino. "I am completely obsessed with flor," he said. "We are very small, and I will not disturb the flor like this. We are entering the season where flor is very delicate and I don't want it to experience any more stress than is necessary." I must say, I admire his dedication to his wines.

The wine in bottle was lovely, but a bit confusing to me. It is an old Fino, like Inocente or Panesa, and it is higher in alcohol (18%?) than any other Fino I can think of, and I felt it just a little bit on the palate. Or was it the power of suggestion? I wish I could drink it again, but none of Fernando de Castilla's wines are imported in the US. I brought home a bottle of the very special Antique Palo Cortado and I would invite you to taste it with me but alas, I already drank it.

Perhaps the highlight of this visit, for me, was tasting Fernando de Castilla's brandies from barrel. We tasted Brandy in its youngest incarnation, throughout the next decade of its life, and then the final product before it is bottled. I actually loved the youngest wine - it reminded me of eau-de-vie in its powerful and delicious fresh fruitiness - it smelled and tasted of ripe pears.

Our Barbadillo visit was also fascinating. First of all, the wine maker is a woman, which is highly unusual in this part of the wine making world.

Her name is Montse Molina and she is originally from Madrid, I believe. So in addition to being a woman, she is also an outsider in Sanlucar, which I imagine must have made it difficult for her in the beginning with the group of men she supervised and collaborated with in making Barbadillo's wines.

We tasted three barrels of Barbadillo's Manzanilla Pasada, each from a different room within one of the Bodegas. These three rooms differed in size, ventilation, and humidity - they produce entirely different wines, in other words. They are eventually blended in order to produce the Manzanilla Pasada that goes into bottle. It was fascinating to taste these three wines in succession, to get a concrete view of the impact of the environment of a Bodega on the barrels of wine it produces. Peter and I took our glasses and blended the three wines in what we thought would be an advantageous way, and it was good. Montse tasted our blend and smiled the way I sometimes smile at my two year old when she is able to get her coat off by herself.

We tasted an old Amontillado and it became instantly clear to me that Amontillado made from Manzanilla is different from Amontillado made from Fino. One is not better than the other, but Manzanilla Amontillado, or at least the few that I've tasted, can have a certain saline and lemon peel brightness that I think is tremendously delicious. These are not easy to find, but worth a special search, if you're into Amontillado. I would suggest that you try Barbadillo's version, which I loved, but it is not imported in the US.

And we tasted the Reliquias. These are very old wines, relics, if you will. They are some of the most expensive and rare Sherries, and Barbadillo literally keeps the room where the Reliquias are served under lock and key. And there was some confusion about the location of the key - several workers were sent scurrying about to search for it. Finally it was located, no one was hurt, and in we went. It would be pointless to try to describe the smell and taste of wines as complex as these, but I can tell you that I have never ever tasted an Amontillado as impossibly light and pungent and balanced and beautiful as this one.

What can I say about visiting La Guita and Valdespino with Eduardo Ojeda? Anything I say will trivialize the actual experience of being there with him, listening to him discuss the wines, the Bodegas, the region. He is a passionate, intelligent, an absolutely gentlemanly and lovely person, a living treasure of the wine making tradition in Jerez and Sanlucar. If you go and visit the region, find him and visit La Guita and Valdespino.

At both La Guita and Valdespino, Eduardo wanted to show us the progression of the wines from their youth to the Solera, ready to be bottled. This was an incredible experience for me, seeing the wine in various stages of its life. At La Guita we tasted a special barrel, barrel No 3 from the 4th criadera that was just lovely - bright, saline, refreshing, intense.

We tasted the barrel that gave us La Bota No 20, and our reaction inspired Cabo, the guy in charge of the Bodega when Eduardo isn't there, to draw off a bottle for us to leave with.

We tasted a hidden barrel of Amontillado, that little one above barrel 17, something that is not bottled. This is one of the great things about visiting a Sherry Bodega - if you are lucky you will get to taste special things, wines that the cellar master cares about but that will never see the inside of a bottle. Again, Amontillado made of Manzanilla wine can be very special, and this was absolutely one of the most memorable wines of the trip for me.

At Valdespino we tasted through many of the 10 criaderas of Inocente, several criaderas of Tio Diego, and and a few other great wines. Inocente is a Fino that comes exclusively from grapes from the Marchenudo Alto vineyard, one of the "Grand Cru" sites of Jerez. Tio Diego is what happens when Inocente becomes an Amontillado - not 30 years later, but very soon after it becomes Amontillado.

What happens after Tio Diego? We walked to the section of the Bodega where a few very special wines age in barrel. There is Viejo CP, a lovely Palo Cortado that originates as Inocente, a wine that is not imported in the US. And finally, there is Cardenal, one of the great wines of Jerez, a very old Palo Cortado of which perhaps 400 half bottles are released each year. The Cardenal solera is fed by Viejo CP. As it was first described to me by Peter, "Even seasoned Sherry buffs in Spain widen their eyes if a bottle of Cardenal is served." We tasted this wine next to Coliseo, a very old Amontillado that originates as a Manzanilla, actually. Both are superb wines of astounding depth and intensity, and also great clarity and articulation, and of seemingly unending length. I calculated 47 minutes on Coliseo, but honestly I just stopped counting at that point. These glorious wines are something like the Richebourg and La Tâche of Sherry, but they can be had for a fraction of the price. I should say they could be, if they were imported to the US. I'm starting to sense a pattern here regarding importation, or lack thereof, of fine Sherry. Are you?


* Patently false. These are wine making tools. And Fernando Hidlago is an upstanding citizen who is well regarded in his community.