Wine Blogging Wednesday #51: Baked Goods

Today is the 51st Wine Blogging Wednesday. Today's theme was picked by the #1 Wine Dude Joe Roberts. He asked us to drink something "baked." What Joe meant by this was he wanted us to pick a wine that had been deliberately heated and oxidized (otherwise known as Madeirized after the classic Madeira wines from Portugal).

Wisely, Joe realized that these might be hard to locate. So he gave us the option of tasting Port or Sherry instead.

Because life is fairly nuts right now with relatives stopping by and the semester winding to a close, I decided to write today about rare sherries. I had the opportunity to taste some when I was a guest of Osborne in May, and one of the reasons I wanted to highlight them today is because they are not only great wines, they represent excellent QPR if you are looking for a single dessert wine that you can have on hand during the holidays and serve over several weeks without them going off or tasting stale.

The reason why this is possible is because they have been fortified with Brandy. This means that if you stopper them up and keep them in a cool dark place you can drink them over weeks, and in some cases months. It also means that they pack a serious punch, so tiny glasses are in order.

N.V. Osborne Rare Sherry Pedro Ximénez Viejo ($100)
Quite simply, this is the best wine I have ever tasted. It opened to a thick blackish brown. At first, I tasted coffee, dark chocolate, and burnt sugar. As it opened, there was an increasing lift of candied lemon and orange peel, some molasses, and even coconut oil. Every time you took a sip, it tasted different--but every sip was delicious.

N.V. Osborne Rare Sherry Solera BC 200 (sorry--couldn't find this anywhere!)
This sherry was drawn from the famous “ABC” solera. The “A” barrels were sold to the Tsar of Russia, leaving 200 “BC” barrels. If you can get your hands on some (lucky you!) you will smell aromas and taste flavors of citrus, toffee, and a little black tea and a brandied cherry aftertaste. This wine was complex, fine, and unforgettable.

N.V. Osborne Rare India Oloroso ($78-$90)
The wine in this bottling is an average of 35-50 years old. This wine was all about caramel aromas and flavors. I tasted not only caramels but sea salt, toast, and burnt sugar. Another fantastic wine.

N.V. Osborne Rare Sherry Palo Cortado Solera PAP ($100)
A stunning sweet wine, with candied orange and toffee aromas. The flavors were a bit less sweet than the aromas suggested, turning to orange marmalade and brown sugar. Dessert in a glass.

N.V. Osborne Sherry 1827 Sweet Sherry ($11-$24)
A budget-friendly and more widely available version of the rare wine listed first, this is nothing like what you would expect. It is coffee-colored, with molasses and cherry cola aromas and flavors. It's so syrupy that I believe the people who told me that they serve it over vanilla ice cream in place of chocolate syrup. Sounds like a perfect dessert to me!

For those of you who think I've lost my mind to label a $100 wine "excellent QPR," fear not. I haven't lost my mind. For $100, you get the perfect ending to every holiday meal from late November all the way through late December. And if you are looking for a special gift for a wine-loving friend? This is it. Those of you on tighter budgets (like me) can get their hands on that 1827 Sweet Sherry and a pint of Häagen-Dazs and check "desserts" off your to-do list.

Thanks to Joe for a great theme, and one that brought back many happy memories of my time in Spain this spring. As usual, I'll have the roundup and the theme for next month's WBW for you when they're available.

Today on Serious Grape: A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine

I'm in the Napa Valley for a few days, visiting wineries and sampling wines and participating in the 2008 Robert Mondavi Taste3 conference at Copia. There I should hear prognostications from some of the leading lights in food and wine regarding where they think we're heading in the future in terms of sustainability, food culture, and of course good taste. (picture of the Taste3 conference between sessions, taken this morning)

Please accept my apologies for slow responses to comments this week and for the lack of a proper post here today. I'll have a lot to say in the upcoming weeks about what I'm learning here, both about food and wine and about the flavors and textures of the Napa Valley.

But there is a post waiting for you today over on Serious Grape, my column on Serious Eats. In a follow up to last week's post on Fino Sherry, I'm taking a closer look at how Sherry is made. Turns out, it has a lot in common with sourdough bread. If you're curious about the connections between a loaf of bread and a jug of Sherry, head over there and check it out.

Telling the Truth About Sherry

Is it hot and humid where you are? Temperatures in northern California have been over 100 degrees in many places, and all across the country folks are complaining about the heat. (photograph "hot hot sun" by masaaidh)

If this sounds like you, you need to go out and get yourself a bottle of Fino Sherry. This may sound wrong, wrong, wrong if "sherry" conjures up great aunt Alice's stuffy front room, crocheted doilies, and tiny glasses of amber liquid served at room temperature that were cringingly sweet. But I'm telling you the truth: Sherry is the best wine you aren't drinking in a heat wave.

There are a few rules if you are interested in putting my veracity to the test. First, you need to go to a store that carries and sells a lot of Sherry. If it has dust on the bottle, you don't want it. You also need to buy a bottle from Spain. Sherry comes from Spain, in much the same way that Champagne comes from France. Other places make make wine with Palomino grapes, but it's just not Sherry. Finally, it needs to be dry and it needs to be pale--this means looking for labels that say Fino, Pale Dry, or go for Manzanilla. (the glass to the far left in this picture has Fino sherry in it, fyi) I've had a few bottles of Sherry here in the US, and the one I go back to over and over again because it's indecently affordable and widely available is Osborne Pale Dry Fino. It also is bottled with a screwcap in a process that keeps it tasting fresh as long as possible. This will cost you somewhere between $7 and $17 a bottle depending on where you are, and where you buy it. I bought my bottles for $11.99 at Weimax just outside San Francisco.

When you get your bottle home, put it in the coldest part of your fridge. Wait until it's very, very cold. Then put two small wine glasses in the freezer. Not thimbles--proper small wine glasses like the ones in the pictures above. My first glass of Fino was served to me in frosted glasses in Bilbao, Spain, so you want to trust me on this detail: frosted glasses keep the sherry cold and that's a good thing.

While you're waiting 5-10 minutes for the glasses to frost up, scrounge the cabinets and fridge for some cured meat (chorizo? salami? pepperoni?), some cheese (Manchego? Parmigiano? goat cheese?) some olives, and some nuts. Good potato chips are also an option. Put whatever you find on a plate--congratulations, you have just made tapas--take your frosty glasses out of the freezer, and pour some of your Fino into the glass.

It should be very, very pale. If it isn't, your bottle wasn't that fresh and you can either drink it anyway or take it back to the store and ask for something that's arrived in the store sometime this year. As you drink it, your body temperature will feel like it went down 10 degrees and you will swear that you have filled your lungs with ocean air. You will be struck by the slight brininess of the Fino (especially if eating olives), or its nuttiness (especially if eating a handful of nuts or some cheese). And you will be amazed at the way the spicy meat of your choice is perfect with the cold, cold wine.

This is the truth nobody tells you about sherry. And when people do tell you these truths, you probably weren't listening. This may sound like a "me, too" post and that I'm jumping on a moving bandwagon since Eric Asimov posted about the attractions of Sherry on Wednesday in the New York Times, but I'm going to post it anyway. There can't be too many people talking this stuff up.

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Curious about the small print? I'm trying out a new way of linking to a social networking site for wine called Adegga. It automatically picks up this AVIN number and links it to a data entry for the wine, and to the contents of individual cellars and tasting notes. I'll be writing a story about it soon, but until then expect to see tiny alpha-numeric lines at the bottom of wine review posts.