And I have watched at family lunches as an uncle or cousin has returned from the cellar armed with a bottle of cream, ready and more than willing to pay the penalty for having missed the curfew. As I got older, I stopped being offered soda-streams and was introduced to the world of alcohol instead. Before lunch would become the “Mackaskie Special” – a mix of gin, Dubonnet and Angosturas bitters, or maybe some scrumpy from the barrel if someone had been to Somerset and always plenty of wine at lunch – sometimes red, sometimes white, and often a Sherry of some kind. (Before we kick this off I must first declare that I’m not an alcoholic, just deeply fascinated by alcohol. I love the shape and colour of the bottles, the labels that point towards their stories – the myths and tales; the rousing whiff of a really superior liquor; the glasses that hold it and the significance of the perfect drink in the perfect place).
My early memories of sherry drinking are accompanied by oddity and delight. A B&B in New Orleans where the high-camp owner laid on a decanter of (what I guess now must have been) oloroso to enjoy during late night hot tub sessions – went down like a dream. Walking through Kensal Rise one afternoon (when summers were hotter), an eager old Spaniard offered me ‘vino y jamon’ from his breezy deli. Never one to refuse the chance of a bit of off-piste liquid refreshment I gladly helped relieve him of his manzanilla stash before continuing on my way.
And the living room in the house of my best friend’s neighbours in Andalucía one holiday: Pepe and his wife and her brother and his son. We all sat around in this room that felt as if it only ever got used for family corpse viewings – all squeaky plastic coated armchairs and obscure staged photos -drinking lukewarm fino and trying to fend off a million questions about how much money we earned and where were our boyfriends. I stumbled along in my rookie Spanish as best I could but was grateful of the vino to lubricate my sentences.
It was only when I went to a drinks expo at Excel, East London a couple of years ago and found myself sitting in on a discussion of different sherry styles that the finer points of this wine started to uncurl. I tried all ten styles that day and before long my enthusiasm earned me an invite to a special sherry and food matching lunch at Mesa in Soho. Sure, I knew that fino went with almonds and manzanilla went with boquerones, but I had no idea that the flavours of roast lamb would accelerate so powerfully with palo cortado. Or that pale cream would stand up so well to camembert and taleggio.
And now sherry is fully looped into my life. A lot of people advocate certain sherries with certain food, but I also love playing around with them. I just spent the summer ‘festivalling’ with my chocolate business and always made sure there was space in the fridges for a few bottles of sherry. (It felt so civilised to be drinking nice cold finos from large glasses whilst everyone else lagged around with tepid cups of grog). I’d sally forth to the other food stalls and make key discoveries – like how well oloroso goes with curry mutton, and, when the queues were too long and I was bound to the stall, what a fine match medium sherry is with Twiglets!
This country is awash with potential sherry safaris. And I love that there are so many misconceptions about it and ‘unenlightened’ souls. The sherry challenge is on and I’m heading in all directions to explore its possibilities…
Petra
