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Can I suggest that you cut this article out and slip it inside an old book to read in twenty years? Show it to your children and grandchildren and shake your head in disbelief at how things have changed. As we slide from 2007 into 2008, Fino sherry is deeply unfashionable. Not only that, it is also delicious and absurdly cheap. A fiver buys you a very reasonable sherry and if you push the boat just a little further, you’ll really know what’s hit you. Let’s go through that again. It’s a delicious drink, and it’s cheap and nobody buys it. What is wrong with you lot?
If you are lucky enough to have a Waitrose within driving distance, and I’m lucky enough to have one within easy walking distance, you really should be buying your sherry from them, because they have a huge and fabulous range. Sherry starts at searingly dry Fino and searingly dry, salty Manzanilla. Amontillado should also be dry, but commercial producers tend to sweeten it, to appeal to the masses, which creates a rather unappealing wine. Buy a proper Amontillado from Waitrose, or even Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference, and you’ll find something nutty and interesting. Sherry is naturally salty and yeasty, and so when they are made sweet, or dolce, and sold a little older, muy viejo, as Oloroso, you get that delicious salt/sweet combination with dark, caramel flavours.
However, dragging myself out of that momentary lapse into sticky heaven, I tasted a small group of Fino sherries and report as follows. I gave first place to two sherries because it very much depends on your perspective. I loved Waitrose Fino Sherry, at £4.75, because it was tastier and more aromatic than the others. The back label is close to the mark with a “nutty tang and yeasty flor character”. It smells of vanilla and fruit and is only mildly reminiscent of sherry on the nose. The vanilla carries through to the taste, which is also very savoury and interesting. Not, perhaps, typical, but very, very tasty. Sainsbury’s Pale Dry Fino, also at £4.75, is a more typical taste. Not much on the nose, but a very good standard taste. Tangy, fresh and salty.
Marks & Spencer’s Dry Sherry, at £4.99, smells of the seaside and is bone dry and quite light on flavour. If you don’t think you like sherry, or you’re serving it to people who aren’t sure, this is quite un-sherry like – not so yeasty and salty. Tesco Finest Extra Dry, at £5.99 smelt dirty to me. There’s still the smell of the seaside, but this was more like standing next to that filthy pipe that spews goodness knows what onto the beach, allowing the children to have great fun diverting rivulets of water as it makes for the sea.
I didn’t like the Hidalgo Fino Clasica, which is £4.99 at Majestic, reduced to £4.49 if you buy 2 Hidalgo sherries. Hidalgo do produce good sherry, so the offer is worth taking up, but this one was lacking. It smelt sweetly fruity and was watery, plain and short in the mouth. Quite inferior to the supermarket offerings.