Sherry Season: Enjoying the Ultimate Thanksgiving Leftover Wine with Chantal Tseng

Class transcript:

All right, welcome one and all. Happy holiday weekend to you all! Happy belated Thanksgiving to you all! I hope you saved some holiday leftovers - turkey, stuffing, gravy, and the like for your sherry today, because sherry, both in color and flavor profile, is you know a wonderful match for the Thanksgiving table. You know, you have like every shade of you know beige, amber, and brown represented here to match all the beige, amber, and brown cuisine on the Thanksgiving table. At any rate, it's a wine that is equally refreshing and food-friendly, and at the this point in the eating and drinking marathon that is the long Thanksgiving weekend. It is nice to have something that is equally revitalizing and is a happy match for all the food that you still have left in your refrigerator.

First and foremost, I want to thank Chantal Seng for for joining us. Say hello to the people, Chantal. Hi, people! How is everybody doing today? I'm really excited to be here to sip sherry, chat about sherry, and toast y'all. Awesome! So, Chantal is one of the country's foremost experts on sherry; she is a U.S. ambassador for sherry week she is a proper book book warm in the best possible sense loves kind of teasing out the you know kind of wildly obscure literary connections for the sake of cocktails and wine and beverages like sherry and she also is curating really kind of unique individual cocktail experiences for people through her website at custom cocktails for the end times and she makes a killer drink in addition to spinning a fabulous yarn about the sherrys that we are about to drink today thank you so much for joining us Chantal.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my co-hosts Zoe Nystrom say hello to the people Zoe. Hello everyone. This is Zoe's last Sunday with us on the payroll; she is going to continue to haunt a tail-up goat wine school from henceforth, but this is the last week she's getting paid to do so at least paid you know through her bank account, you know we will continue to pay her in other ways hopefully. It has been an honor, Zoe; we're gonna miss the hell out of it. We've been selling a couple of flights for the occasion this week on the first one, Sherry 101, you know kind of really embodies the three kinds of most prevalent styles.

Sherry comes in many shapes and sizes, that's one of the great joys of sherry, and we had three of the most famous archetypes here in Fino represented by Manzanillo, Amontillado, and Oleroso, and we're gonna start with those and we're gonna keep moving forward. We're going to kind of really treat this as a guided tasting. And we're going to start with tasting notes on each of these individual wines and try to come to a deeper understanding of why the wines taste the way they do, you know, working backwards from what's in the glass, because, you know, that gives you a chance to drink more readily. Not that you need an excuse at home. But, you know, I think that backward kind of mode is just a more, you know, enjoyable way to structure class.

So we're going to work from the glass back to the bodega, as it were. For the sake of the wines themselves, you know, what glass should be serving these in, you know, what temperature, you know, traditionally in Spain, they give you a copita, which is, you know, ita, the diminutive. So it's just a little glass and, you know, you'd throw it back and fill it up again. So you wouldn't, you know, you know, be throwing sherry into a larger wine glass. So, you know, we're going to work from the glass back to the bodega, as it were. But, you know, the, you know, more rigorous, you know, kind of producers in the region, certainly they throw their wines into wine glasses. Chantel, what are you drinking out of at the moment?

I'm drinking out of a standard white wine glass. Yeah, yeah. So that's what that's what I have as well. And, you know, I will say I am not one to better size wine glasses. You know, I would be happy to drink out of this singular glass, you know, in perpetuity. It's a great glass for all wines. You know, a wine like Manzanilla is currently in my glass will open up a little more in a glass like this than it would in a traditional Copita, but it's better for it. As for serving temp, you can think about Manzanillas as, you know, the lighter Fino sherrys, lighter in color is kind of the white wines of the sherry world. Serve them accordingly closer to, you know, 45, 50 degrees in temp.

And then the darker styles, more oxidative styles closer to the red wines, although, you know, typically you'd serve them closer to like the 55-degree cellar temp. But as the wines get more unctuous and darker in color, typically you can come up in temp as well. So kind of that's the lay the land just to kick things off. We've got a strong contingent of folks. Welcome to you all. Happy belated Thanksgiving. Going to kick things off with a bit of verse as we are want to do. Sherry has all sorts of really proud literary associations, one of my favorite things about it. And the British, the English are very celebratory. They were deeply involved in making sherry what it is today, deeply involved in the trade of wine in the region, deeply involved in the consumption of wine from the region.

And so, you know, kind of deeply enmeshed is sherry in their literary culture that the British Poet Laureate from 1819 on was paid with a full butt of sherry, but being a 600 liter traditional vessel crafted from neutral American oak contains 720 bottles. So it's good to be the British Poet Laureate. This comes from a Poet Laureate of the 22nd, Carol Ann Duffy. She's not the current Poet Laureate. She's the first woman to hold the position, the first LGBTQ person to hold the position. She's one of my favorite poets. She calls this poem. Who wouldn't feel favored at the end of a week's labor to receive as part wages a pale wine; puts them out in mind of the sea.

And not gladly be kissed by gentle William Shakespeare's lips, the dark, raisiny taste of his song bequeathed to his 1,000 daughters and sons. The stolen wines of the Spanish Sun or walk the cool bodega's isles where floor and oxygen grow talented in fragrances and flavors to snip, sip, spit, swallow, savor. um what a lovely um bit of verse um from uh from carol um you know hugely evocative and uh you know i think really uh encapsulates you know the freshness of this particular style so um the poet laureate um gets to choose um their uh butt of uh sherry uh for the sake of payment and uh this is carol ann uh with her

selected butt of manzanilla um pretty badass i think uh anytime uh her majesty queen elizabeth ii signs off on anything but particularly a barrel of wine um any of you looking for gift ideas for wine school look no further um at any rate um without further ado let's consider uh the wine itself and uh we're gonna let uh try to let um chantal drive the book of the lesson because um she is uh the esteemed and uh noted uh expert uh on the subject but um i get to for a hot second uh before That happens, uh, so, uh, we're going to kick it here, um, with a crash course, um, in, uh, Sherry history, um, because, uh, you know I think it's important to understand the place before you can understand the wine, the term  itself.

Sherry, um, is actually an Anglicism of, um, the place name here, so at its bare essence, um, Sherry is wine from here, um. Now, uh, the, uh, city here, um, is along the, uh, kind of southern coast of Spain, uh, is just inland from Cádiz, Cádiz was, uh, historically the port of disembarkation for, uh, the Spanish Armada for, uh, the various fleets, um, departing from Spain and exploring, uh, the New World, so it's a very it's wrapped up in the age of exploration um and uh in you know really the uh beginning of the history of modern uh europe as we know it but um that place name hereth is actually itself derived from uh the moorish name sherrys um and uh it should be noted that this corner of spain bears a deep imprint of um its uh islamic um you know uh originally occupation beginning in uh 700 into four centuries of moorish rule under various caliphates uh the spanish language um is uh at least a quarter uh derived from um arabic um any word that starts with al such as alcohol um is itself uh derived from arabic so huge imprint now um you're thinking to yourself You know, Arabic Islam these, uh, seem to be at odds with you know this notion of wine drinking. Um, it should be said that much of the classical Andalusian poetry of the era, which is absolutely gorgeous, one of my favorite schools of poetry is devoted to the appreciation of love and wine. Um, so you know, at this time, um, you know your average, uh, Moorish, uh, prince um was very much enjoying wine and, uh, there has been wine made here um for the better part of, you know, 3,000 years.

Um, began with the Phoenicians in, uh, 1,100 BCE, the region passed from the Phoenicians to the Greek Phoenicians to the European Phoenicians to The Carthaginians to the Romans to the Vandals, um, the region itself Andalusia takes its name from the Vandals, drop the 'b' you get the land of the Andals, Andalusia. Um, they lisp a little bit in that part of Spain and it should be said that it has its very own, distinct uh, culture, separate and distinct from the rest of the country. I said that the wine itself, sherry is, you know, in a way a wine from uh this corner of the world. Legally, sherry cannot come, um, from anywhere else. You can make wine in the style of sherry, but wine legally designated as a sherry cannot come, um, from anywhere else uh but this corner of the world, but um, this.

Corner of the world, even more closely demarcated, um, and uh, typically only includes uh, the Sherry Triangle. So if we zoom in, um, for the sake of this large uh, a wine from this corner of the world, uh, sherry cannot come from uh, this corner of the world, uh, sherry cannot come from um, this corner of the world. Uh, you get a smaller uh area and uh that is defined by three um kind of major centers of the Sherry trade uh, Jerez which we mentioned which is the namesake of sherry um also San Lucar de Bemera on the banks of the Guadalquivir river and El Cueto de Santa Maria um, and you're thinking Santa Maria yes that Santa Maria like Uh, the vessel, one of the three that Columbus set sail with, to the New World, with and uh, that should be said, that El Puerto has a fascinating link to American history.

Uh, Columbus had a via there, um, Santa Maria was uh, the place where the first map of the Americas was drawn out, um, Sherry as a wine doesn't really uh come of age until the Age of Exploration, uh, beginning in the 15th and then into the 16th century, um, and it becomes hugely fashionable in England. Uh, it begins to uh, become a to have spirit added to it, um, so uh they take a wine that comes off the vineyards at 11-12 alcohol, they add a bit of fortifying spirit, um, and that raises The alcohol, uh, to 14, 15, 18 and above, um, and that is chiefly to protect it, um, to make it more durable on trans-oceanic voyages. It becomes so popular that by 1548, um, there are over 60,000 barrels being produced in this kind of point of origin.

It's estimated that 40,000 of those were designated for export, the bulk majority going to England. That's kind of an abstract number, but just so you get a better sense, that translates to 26,750,000,000 milliliter bottles. So sherry is a huge commodity as early as the middle of the 16th century, and its fortunes wax and wane for the next several centuries thereafter. The greatest bodegas trace their roots to the tail end of the 19th century. The English are its foremost really celebrants. We, the American colonies, and then the kind of nation of the United States, inherit the English love of sherry, and we adapt it to our own ends through cocktail culture. The first cult cocktail, the Sherry Cobbler, really takes sherry and adds it to the cocktail culture.

So it's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very rich cocktail. It adds citrus and sugar and makes it into something that really kind of captivates both the American imagination and then the British and continental European imagination from there. So, sherry is both a wine to be enjoyed as itself, and this wonderful, versatile product that is used to multiple ends when we come to the turn of the 20th century. Sadly, phylloxera, prohibition, war boils, intervene. Sherry really has a rough go of it in the 20th century, but it is re-emerging and surging into the 20th. What then are we dealing with? Before we get to Chantel, I just wanted to deliver one more quote. This is from Talia Baiocchi's book.

I'm sure I'm butchering her name, but she wrote, really, for me, one of the best modern tomes about sherry. It's called The Modern Guide to Sherry. It starts with this notion of the three elements of sherry production that set it apart. The first is the Solera system, a method of gradually blending new wines with older wines so that ultimately each bottle is a mixture of many vintages. The second element is floor, a layer of benign yeast that naturally grows on the surface of the wine, protects it from oxidation, and ultimately gives rise to this myriad, of styles, and is called biological aging. And then third is a unique relationship between the terroir of the vineyard, the interplay of the soil, the climate, and the grape varietal, and the terroir of the physical structure where the wine is aged.

So, you know, there's this notion of terroir with sherry that we talk about very often in class that is, you know, this imprint that the land has on the grapes, that the grapes then reveal in the wine. There's a second imprint in sherry because the wine is aged in bodega, and there's a terroir of the bodega itself. One of the kind of foremost producers in the region says that the life of sherry begins where the life of other wine ends. And, you know, therefore you have this dual imprint. You have this imprint of place as such, and a set of chalky soils in southern Andalusia, white grapes grown on white ground. And then you have the imprint of the hand of man in the cellar, and this years-long either biological aging process under floor, or the oxidative aging process without it, which gives rise to a myriad of styles that we are going to celebrate henceforth.

So, without further ado, we got to 4.17. I'm sorry, Chantal, I took a little longer than I should have there, but I want to circle back to you. Hopefully everyone's eyes aren't glossing over and we can taste some wine. Chantal, how did you get into sherry in the first place? What captured your imagination? Thank you, Bill. That was amazing. I feel like that was just, I hope everyone absorbed everything you said. It was beautifully researched. It was delightful. How did I get into sherry? I got into sherry because I got into working at restaurants and bars, and I became a bartender, and found sherry on my back bar. And not knowing much about it, I tried it a few times, and mixed feelings, and then I tried them in cocktails, and then the cocktail, the Adonis, came, and I loved it so much.

And I'm not sure if you can still hear me. I may have lost everybody. Let me know. Did I cut out at all? You're cutting in and out a bit, but we can hear you loud and clear, so yeah. Okay, sorry about that. That does sometimes happen. I apologize. So the Adonis cocktail is kind of my real gateway to loving sherry. And what's in an Adonis, Chantal? I like to, well, the Adonis and the Bamboo cocktail are these classic cocktails that came from, you know, late 1800s that were in that beautiful time period of the Golden Age. Of classic cocktails and before Prohibition and all that. And I always liken the Adonis to a sherry Manhattan versus the Bamboo is more like a sherry martini.

Because of the usage of the sweet vermouth and the dry vermouth, respectively. And you can make an Adonis with the dry sherry, like I used Amontillado, my first version of the Adonis was with the Luz de los Arcos Amontillado, which you have in your flight today. A lot of recipes online will call for even drier, and that has definitely been a trend that's happened over the last 10 years, where people were making the Adonis typically, like I know Adam Bernbach loves using an Oloroso. And then they kind of shifted to going to use Fino, so using like a Fino which is drier and more crisp, with the sweet vermouth, and the bitters, and stirred. But, um, I, it all tastes delicious I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna knock any of these versions I just, I learned it as a, as a richer, like, akin like the sherry being closer to like an oxidative style thinking more like, like a bourbon or a rye but instead you're using sherry and it's a lower alcoholic version.

I usually make mine with Amontillado, which is why we named this guy. Kitty over here. His name is Monty which is Amontillado. Oh nice. Yeah. He just likes to be on the screen. I didn't call him or anything. But, yeah, so. But, yeah, so. Yeah, so that's kind of my gateway and then my taste just kept getting drier and drier and I do prefer just a good Fino or a. Yes, thank you. A good Fino or a Manzanilla, and one of the Anramas as well. I happen to have the Valdespino Manzanilla Deliciosa Anrama, that is my go-to for the last few months. It's been; it's going to be really hard to find in stock for a little while, but they do carry it over at Irving Wine for until it's gone.

Brian. So, um, have you been to the sherry region? Yes, I've been very fortunate to have visited the sherry region three times. For three different reasons. The last time was a was when I became a certified Sherry educator through; they have a program they do in the fall and the spring. The fall is in English and the springs are Spanish. I don't speak Spanish, so I went for the fall. And before, and then, yeah, um, I got to go and plan it for my Toronto. Before that, a few different times I got to travel and visit many of the bodegas, including La Guita, L'Estao, El Maestro Sierra, that you have there. Also, Hidalgo La Guitana, La Cigarera, which is what I'm enjoying right now on my glass, and a few others.

So yeah, I highly recommend if anyone does find themselves traveling that way. In the future that is no longer pandemic sorted, then feel free to reach out. I might be able to give you some recommendations or some people that you could talk to. And do you find it's an easy region to travel in just in terms of their openness to sherry lovers? Oh, it is beautiful. It is wonderful. Then when you travel down to Jerez, people take care of you. They're so excited that you made the trip down there. Because if you travel to Spain in general, it's really unlikely unless you make a specific detour and head all the way down south. People often go, okay, let's check. Barcelona, Madrid, maybe they'll make it to Sevilla.

But you have to drive down or fly down. It's not super easy unless you say, I'm going to sherry country. And so you have to make that decision. And when you do, people are very happy that you're there. It's really amazing. I can't talk about that enough. And I think there's something, there's this southern, I've not been there, but it reminds me a bit of Sicily in the sense that there's this very southern Mediterranean kind of modality where life slows down. And so people nurse a 500 milliliter bottle of Moscato over lunch. And if you're sitting down, you're not going to sit down for 15 minutes. Sitting down is a commitment to an hour-long lunch, is a commitment to just spending time with food and wine and your company.

And there's this wonderful kind of unhurried quality to life in those corners of the world, which I find initially kind of hard to sometimes warm up to, as hardwired as we are. It's a, you know, the frenetic pace of life on this coast. But, you know, once you, you know, get in that mode, I think is really seductive and alluring. Oh, yeah, for sure. And what's unique, too, is you mentioned before, there's this, the sherry triangle, right? So you have sherry country, and it's based out of these three different towns, the largest being Jerez, Jerez de la Frontera. There's the port town, El Parto de Santa Maria. And then there's the beach town, San Lucar de Barrameda. And they do each have their own personalities.

And the specific contrast you'll see, too, is from San Lucar de Barrameda, which is furthest north, and it's like the one that's basically there's beaches, it opens up to the very beginning of the Guadalquivir River, which is huge and just giant. And it's a beach town, versus you go inland to Jerez, and it's just more, you're going to have more people wearing suits in Jerez. And in San Lucar, you have more gypsies, like, showing up at your bodegas, singing a tune, and then running off with your money. Which, you know, doesn't sound great. But, you know, it's all good fun. It's just a different culture. There's just such a different vibe in the two different towns. And if you travel around with some of the Sherri people, they'll talk about that a lot.

And it's pretty funny. I wish I spoke Spanish. I know I missed out on so much, because I don't, which makes me sad sometimes. But I'm terrible with languages. Yeah, I love this quote. So this is from Talia again, about San Lucar. And it's fitting that you're talking about that, because we're going to start with a Manzanilla Sherry. And Manzanilla is a type of phenotype. It's a Sherry, specifically from San Lucar de Bermuda. And Talia is talking about the residents of San Lucar. They call themselves San Lucanios. She says, identifying as a San Lucanero, whether or not one even lives there, refers partly to this particular talent for relaxation. But it's also something deeper, something that has to do with the town, something rebellious bent, a revolutionary spirit stifled by economic despair, but not stamped out.

While there's always been bodegas there that match Jerez in grandeur and scale, San Lucar has historically been a cottage industry in comparison, a city whose wine business has always been run by many, as opposed to a noble few. So it's kind of a more democratic, egalitarian kind of place. And let's taste here for the sake of our first offering and our first wine. So Zoe, we're going to give it over to you for tasting notes on this first one. This comes from La Guita. And that is not the name of the bodega, it should be said. That's a bit of a nickname. The estate itself. The estate itself is actually owned by Val Espino, but the full name of the bodega is Hijos de Raniera Perez Marin, but that's a bit of a mouthful.

So they just go with La Guita, which means the string. You can see there's a string on the label. It's part of the brand. La Guita refers to a guitar string, and it's basically slang for cash. And supposedly the founder of this particular bodega, it traces its origins to 1852. It was something of a raconteur and a gambler, and his kind of major product, this particular type of sherry, became synonymous with his, I guess, gambling, you know, for lack of a better association. And we're all the better for it. Zoe, you know, we can see this in the glass. It is, you know, crystal clear, maybe pale, you know, yellow at best. What do you taste? You can totally tell that it's from San Lucas de Batameta.

Like, the sea salt is right in your face. After salt and after that, like, gorgeous ocean breeze, I'm going to suck in some of the orchard fruit notes that people are putting into the chat right now. Like, pear and, like, yellow apple. It also has this, like, I don't know, like, stony, steely minerality to it. And then I was kind of surprised that it had a bit of, like, almost like bready notes on the finish to it on the back end. So we traced the sherry's origin to St. Lecoq, the rebellious beach town. How does the swine begin its life in the vineyard, Chantal? I'm gonna pull up a picture of these strikingly chalky vineyards here. Yeah, you're looking at all the Albaritza soils, which is just super white chalky soils.

And in fact, it's sort of the southernmost part of that huge shelf that begins all the way north at the Cliffs of Dover, that goes through Chablis and like those Cameridian soils and all that limestone chalkiness. It ends right here and like down in Jerez. This is just all this chalky soil, which is what makes the grape growing in the vineyard so ideal with the conditions. It just retains so much moisture. Because as you can imagine, southern Spain is pretty hot and dry. And you're also right next to the ocean. So there's a cool westerly wind that comes in and adds some moisture to the air. But it's just a great way for the soil that, limestone will do different things in different wine regions around the world.

But here, it kind of likes traps the rain when it's the rainy season, which is more in the spring, and creates little reservoirs so that the vines can go really deep down in the soil. And it's have water, even when it's super hot and dry out. But this is so key. The Alba Rita soil, Alba means white. So that's easy to remember. Because it's such a chalky white soil. And what grapes are we dealing with here, Chantel? Here you're probably just looking at Palomino. There are three different grape varietals for what could be classified as sherry, but the mainstay for all of the dry sherry styles is Palomino, also known as Palomino Fino. And it's just a really lovely white. Grape varietal; all sherry is white grapes.

And it has sort of like this, not a ton of acidity, not a ton of, it's just a very mild and pretty grape that just excels in this sort of environment in this sort of soil. Great. And, you know, for the sake of this wine, the average age is four and a half years. And, you know, we've talked a lot about, you know, kind of evaluating wines as they age and white wines taking on a more golden hue. You know, this has a little bit of that golden hue. A little bit of that golden aspect to it, but it is, you know, mostly crystal clear, you know, what protects this particular offering from oxidizing as it ages in the bodega. Oh, you're talking about the floor.

I wasn't reading the chat and trying to answer your question. I was listening to you the entire time. Yeah, so you have what you have this layer of yeast called the floor. It's just very native to the region and you'll see that this is a barrel turned on its side. and it's like a 600-liter barrel, which is typical what they call the butts, or the sherry botas, and they usually fill it about five-six full because they want that pocket of air at the top because this is a live yeast right, so it settles, it grows on the wine; it naturally just happens because if you think about it, you leave a piece of fresh fruit out, things happen, things grow. Right? You create the right conditions and things grow.

But this is it's a live thing, so you can kind of see it sits on top because it needs air to breathe, so you have air on top; it's breathing all that but it blankets the rest of the wine, so that no oxygen gets below it, which is why the fino and manzanillas that you're tasting to begin with are going to be considered non-oxidative wines; they're biologically aged, meaning under a live yeast called flor, yeah. So if this was a telestrator, we would circle the Yeast and that's your biology, you know that is the biology and the biological aging right there and you know it looks pretty biological. Um, that is actually several strains of Saccharomyces yeast, um, you know the same set of yeasts that transforms um sugar into alcohol, um, you know during the initial fermentation process, and it requires these very specific conditions, um, in which to thrive in the headspace of these barrels and the bodegas.

So, um, in the bodegas themselves, you know it seems like happenstance but over the centuries, they have really perfected uh the art of uh cultivating um, you know uh the same yeasts. The the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the this kind of, um, you know kind of layer, um, of uh, of floor, um, and the conditions are, uh, high humidity so between 70 and 75, uh, degrees of humidity, um, in, uh, the bodegas themselves, and a pretty moderate temperature so somewhere between 64 and 68 degrees, um, Fahrenheit. Now that is problematic, especially in the summer because you're in a hugely arid, extremely hot, uh, region, so, the, uh, growers, the, uh, producers of the region had to kind of establish these very specialized conditions, um, to cultivate, you know, these wines, um, in this mode and, uh, they did so, um, using these Like really gorgeous cathedral-like buildings that evolved and really reached their apotheosis kind of toward the tail end of um the 19th century, and this is Louis d'Au's, you see these high ceilings and this is called a cathedral style and there's this religiosity um to um these structures um and um actually the most hallowed kind of um you know kind of uh parts of these larger buildings are actually called the sacristy which means a sacristy which in a cathedral is the most hallowed um you know part of um you know the the cathedral um you know where you know the the wafer and the wine um are are ultimately stored so um it seems very southern spanish you know there's this like high religiosity um you know about uh the region um as well um i find but um the uh kind of uh base of the floor you see there is this kind of um coarse sand called albero um and it is constantly refreshed um with water to uh both lower the temp and uh ensure higher humidity um what windows there are here typically are higher um they're east or west facing to ensure proper airflow um so they've arrived at this architecture that supports the set of conditions they need to ensure the growth of this um you know kind of magical um yeasty film that makes these wines uh what They are, and that's a great segue into our second, which is a style called Amontillado.

Amontillado begins its life as a Fino sherry, and this particular one we're drinking spends four years as Fino, but then uh they raise uh the uh level of alcohol in it so it's a very dynamic show I'm going to talk about it in a little bit later, so if you're watching this you can see the Kohla and the Sherry um ages at somewhere between 14-15 uh percent alcohol, but once you raise the alcohol to 17-18 uh you create sub-optimal conditions for the flor, it dies off and you get something that does not have that protective growth and ages more oxidatively. Um, and so this one from Lucedale, uh, whose cathedral-like bodega you just saw there, um is aging oxidatively for an additional four years after that initial four years of oxidative aging.

Zoe, what do you get on the nose for the sake of this one? I thought this had much more butterscotch and caramel notes, much more warm. In terms of fruit, instead of it being like orchard fruit, I thought this jumped into more of the stone family, some yellow plums. I thought that it was also like soured citrus as well, and that sour quality really comes through with that like, you know, raging acid, but also that tartness that I love. And there was still like a little bit of nuttiness that I really enjoy. This is more like, I don't know, maybe more almond skin as opposed to like a praline. Chantal, what do you love about Amontillado? You know, drinking on its own and working with cocktails.

You referenced your cat, Monty, so clearly it is a wine that you love. It is the sherry that first stole my heart in sherry. But yeah, it's so beautifully complex because you have what it's the one category in sherry that gives you a little bit of both worlds. It gives you, yes, part of its life spent under yeast and on the floor developing those really cool, toasty, bready, acetyl-hyde-ic notes, I'm using the wrong adjective, but; and all that complexity that you get from being a little bit more savory, and you get that, and then it also spends time in the oxidative stage, which we haven't tasted yet, but then you get that sort of roundness and that richness and more of that spice and the nuttier edges; they kind of, they sing and they get married together and they create a whole new style.

It's really unique, so aromatically complex. Every swish, you get 300 different things can happen at any given time and it's also, I find, the most adaptable to food pairing. All sherry goes so great with different types of food, but Amontillado kind of really bridges a lot of cuisines. It speaks to my broader love of things that are kind of between genres. So it is a little bit fino, a little bit oloroso, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll, and it has the elegance of fino but some of the breadth of an oloroso. That really gives it this wonderful skeleton key quality when it comes to pairings. I find the same thing myself, and it's a wine that I just enjoy drinking for its own sake, because it is so, So both, you know, wonderfully versatile, but wonderfully multifaceted.

And I think, you know, depending on how you approach it, you know, even what kind of mood you're in, or what kind of other drink you're coming off of, or what type of food you're eating, you know, it reveals a different, you know, facet of its personality. And it's just like wonderfully dynamic kind of way. Which brings us to the last kind of classical archetype, which is Oloroso. Oloroso means aromatic in Spanish. And, you know, it is kind of like the most effusively aromatic of the bunch. I think, you know, kind of fruitcake and dried fruit and, you know, toasted hazelnuts when it comes to the Oloroso style. But you're dealing with a wine that never ages, you know, biologically. So the cellar master.

Essentially deciding from the outset that, you know, this is a wine that is destined for this, you know, kind of fuller expression. And at the outset, you know, adding more alcohol to the wine so that it has no chance to develop that more delicate flavor. And, you know, they are kind of working, you know, with different vineyards. And over time, they've realized that, you know, certain vineyards gives wines that are more delicate and better suited for Fino or Manzonia. Other soil types even give wines that are better suited for this, you know, a wine with a little more breadth. And sometimes they'll, you know, press a little harder. So typically with, you know, Fino in particular, you're getting free-run juice or very light pressings.

And then with Oloroso, you know, you're getting slightly harder pressings for these wines. And, you know, some of those coarser phenolics, some of those, you know, you know, kind of bigger, less delicate flavors. So this comes from El Maestro Chiera, three generations strong. And there's a lot of females in Sherry. You know, there's actually a, there are a lot of kick-ass women making wine throughout Spain, but in the South in particular, which historically was a little more conservative, there aren't quite as many of them. But this particular producer, El Maestro Chiera, three generations strong, including Ana Cabrecero, who's the current Capataz. Capataz is this like mythological cellar master in, you know, the Sherry parlance. Zoe, what do you get when it comes to this wine? You know, on the nose and on the palate?

This is so remarkable. I love its richness, and then I love how it just finishes so whistle clean. You know, it really does like take the like figs, and that's like very supple, sweeter texture where you like think it's going to go into a different place, and then it makes like a direct like left turn. And then that balanced with the acid you get like more savory notes as well. Um, like you wrote like beef stock in the tasting notes, I think that's like absolutely phenomenal. I got that little like mushroom umami thing with like dried leaves and then um like tea leaves, um, and and other dried fruit, yeah, I mean uh, I love Sherry in part two because it's like the MSG of wines, you know, it is the most umami driven wine in the world.

It's like the Popeyes Cajun Magic, um, and uh, part of that too is uh, because of the production in in Oloroso Sherry of glycerol. Glycerol is a byproduct of fermentation and creates this perception of weight on your palate, and one of the things Flora does is it strips the wine of glycerol. Um, but in these wines like Olorosos that aren't stripped by Flora of their glycerol, they have this almost perceptual sweetness and weight, um, Chantelle what do you like about this particular style oh well yeah particularly Al Maestro Sierra I'm such a huge fan of this um, this Bodega and this Oloroso is my go-to um, I like it because of the weight because uh, well first of all it's hard not to talk about Oloroso and any of these categories without talking about their Range because as you previously tasted the Los Arcos, which is a very full-bodied Amontillado, and the oloroso here, I wouldn't say is necessarily a full-bodied oloroso but it is delightful and it sings and its complexity and length and you get that that really amazing earthly mushroomy umami vibe but you get them from both of these types of styles and um what I love so much about it is how it it has a little bit more weight, it can stand up to different types of meatier dishes, different types of dishes that you might not be able to like certain things will get lost in and the same with cocktail ingredients um something very Adaptable about sherry, like you can pair it with something that you would think wouldn't make sense at two different dishes and you kind of go, 'well, it kind of brings a little bit to both'; it kind of brings something to tuna; it kind of brings something to a pork loin. It just kind of does something that you wouldn't necessarily expect, and it works well and people enjoy being able to pair it with some delicious food, besides losing weight and eating Eric's foods are both state-made and home-made frappe and such, so uh, so it has a lot of different things don't do that. It's just a whether you're closer to a 24-hour chicken dinner or you are or. Can't you, you're, you're relatively national than a 34-hour chicken dinner like those are all different in So I universally despise hard and fast pairing rules because there are always exceptions and you should, you know, live in the mystery and, you know, have fun with the, you know, kind of unexpected, you know, kind of kismet discoveries that come with just trying a lot of different food and flying. But this one, you know, is just too fun not to perpetuate.

So there's a rule when it comes to sherry to say if it swims, you know, in Manzanilla, if it flies in Montiallo, Palo Portado, if it runs Oloroso. So obviously that only has to do with protein. So sadly, in Spanish parlance, you know, or in Andalusian parlance, I guess there weren't a lot of vegetarians, you know, so maybe there's a separate set of pairing tropes for vegetables. Maybe like if it's raw, you know, if it's a Manzanilla, you know, if it's, you know, lightly roasted a Montiallo, if it's, you know, charred or darkly roasted, you know, Oloroso. But at any rate, you know, it is a certain truth to this particular set of clichés. And, you know, I think it is kind of fun to play around with.

And sherry is, you know, Psalms will say this so they're blue in the face. But. But it is one of the wine world's great values. So we were drinking an Oloroso. The minimum age on that wine coming out of Solera is 15 years, 15 fucking years for something that retails for, you know, typically like under $30 or $30. And, you know, everything is done by hand in that bodega, transferring the wine, you know, you name it, you know, from from Bota to Bota. You know, it is a hugely artisanal product in and of its own right. And it is hugely versatile in terms of the things it goes with. So, you know, when we're constructionists. When we're working, you know, tasting menus, when we're working out pairings, sherry is this, you know, really fabulous, you know, kind of, you know, paint color to be able to deploy, you know, for the sake of your canvas that, you know, is wonderfully varied and versatile and, you know, just brings so much to the table.

And I think people just avoid it, sadly, in workaday life, you know, it's not the thing that people ask for. It's not the thing on the tip of their tongue. But I think whenever. Whenever they get it in the glass, whenever they, you know, are able to approach it in context with the right dish, they're always hugely impressed. So are there any questions from the lot about any of these wines for Chantal? You name it. Could you elaborate more on the denominations on each barrel and like particularly the striking method with like the Amontillado and Palo Cortados? You mean the symbols, right? Did you talk to me? Or Bill? I'm sorry. No, it's just for you. Okay, okay. Yeah, sure.

So one of the really cool things, and if you go to, if you do visit Bodegas Lustau, they actually have this really, they have a whole bunch of artwork dedicated to all these like classic symbols. And so, you know, all the white chalk on the dark barrels are, it's just part of their capataz, their organized organization system of their warehousing of their barrels, where when they first classify a sherry and they're deciding whether they're going to be, it's going to be a Fino or a Manzanilla and they're going to, let it be biologically aged versus if it's going to be an Oloroso, because that's the first classification, they mark it with a single slash, right? So just like a, like one little slash and that's a Fino.

And if they're like, oh, this is a little bit fuller and it's not as pretty and delicate, then they're going to pursue the Oloroso. So then they just put a circle and that makes it an Oloroso. And then as you, as they're, and that's the first classification and then later they're like, okay, is it going to be, continue aging beyond Fino? Because essentially, you know, Amontillado is an old Fino or a Manzanilla. Well, then they, then they kind of do this little A thing in there. And so it's like a, it looks like, it almost looks like a, one of the at symbols, but it's not, it's a little bit different. And it's got a slash through it and it's kind of an evolution of the slash and everything together and its own unique thing.

Palo Cortado, it looks more like a cross. And the reason why Palo Cortado looks more like a cross is because even though there's many different ways to talk about Palo Cortado, it really is just a Fino, because it's a first mosto that they discovered. And so they, it's a Fino that's like a particularly beautiful must that instead of letting it become a full Fino, they, they decide to take that beautiful must and pursue oxidatively a Sherry, which ended up being a Palo Cortado. That's generally what happens these days. And then, so that one's like a slash and a cross. And then they have, there's other things after that. The Muscatel and PX are different. They're like an E thing and then a PX and it's, that didn't help. I know this means nothing.

Well, yeah, there's, it's like, uh, it's like Dan Brown level, um, you know, kind of, uh, you know, graphic language. Um, it is a great segue into the two Palo Cortados that we have. It should be said that Palo Cortado is like personally one of my favorite styles. Um, uh, and it's for the same reason that Amontillado is one of my favorite styles. Um, and, and the difference between Amontillado and Palo Cortado is hugely murky and hugely unregulated. Um, it's one of the, you know, kind of most common questions I get when I'm teaching this to our staff is, you know, what's the difference between Amontillado and Palo Cortado? Well, stylistically, um, in, in Sherry country, they would say that, you know, a Palo Cortado is, is richer than, um, an Amontillado, but lighter than an Oloroso.

Um, but they are kind of cut from the same cloth in the sense that originally, you know, they begin their life, uh, aging biologically, and then they end it aging oxidatively. That said, it's a huge continuum. So there's some producers that make their Palo Cortado, um, like other producers make their Amontillado. Um, and, uh, you know, we drank kind of a broader shouldered, um, Amontillado for the sake of the Luz de los Tacos, which is from Jerez. Um, and then the wines of Jerez tend to be, you know, more substantive. It's inland. Uh, they tend to get less of a biological influence. The floor there, um, which depends on humidity, doesn't grow as thickly as it does in Sanlucar. And then we have a wine like the Wellington.

So the Wellington is a VOS. VOS is a designation in Jerez for wines that, um, at a bare minimum are 20 years old. Um, it comes from a Latin phrase, Vinum Optimum Signatum. Um, but in English, they say very old sherry, which just feels much more prosaic. You know, please use the Latin at home. It just sounds way better. Um, but this is, uh, Hidalgo La Itana, which is in, um, Sanlucar. And as such, it begins its life, not only as vino, but as, as Manvenia, which is the most delicate of the vino sherry. So you have a Paolo Cortado here that drinks kind of like a Montiel, um, and, and has some of that, you know, kind of, uh, you know, kind of, uh, delicate, uh, you know, uh, quality, um, uh, to it.

And I was going to ask, uh, Zoe for a tasting notes here, but, uh, she is attending to other things at the moment. Uh, Chantel, are you familiar with this one? Oh, yeah. Oh, I wish I could drink it all the time. Um, what do you like about, uh, the, the Wellington? About the Wellington? Um, it's a really pretty Paolo Cortado. It is so honey. It is so honey. It is all about like the salt caramel and the honey. And, it's just has this lean, leanness to it. Right. So it's not rich and fruitcake-y like you get from some of Lusdao and some Williams and Humbert offerings, which are a little bit fuller bodied like that. It is just, it is like toffeed, but soft. And at the same time it finishes dry.

And whenever I say finishing dry, something that I would love to just bring up real quick is my favorite metaphor for when I talk about the perceived dryness and perceived wheatiness. It's my favorite metaphor for when I talk about the perceived dryness and perceived wheatiness. When you get out of sherrys as I call it, the, um, the Sour Patch effect, right. The Sour Patch Kid Effect where you can smell a glass of sherry and it smells sweet, but then when you taste it it's actually has like a sour and a dry quality finish to it. And these are dry sherries are like this. It's kind of the opposite of the Sour Patch Kid where you bite into it and it's like sour and then it finishes sweet.

So I call it like the reverse Sour Patch Effect often happens because your nose will be fooled. It will be like, Oh my God, that smells like toffee and richness and walnut and then you taste it and you're like oh oh that's so much not what I was expecting because then if you try later a sweeter sherry then you'll be like oh no that's sweet that's sweet it kind of it messes it's like it plays mind tricks it plays palate tricks on you but that's makes it fun yeah and it is I think I think for those of us that live in this universe of smell and taste that's another thing that we love about sherry is the way that you know it kind of conflates those expectations of what you think something is when you kind of initially approach it on the nose and then subsequently appreciate it you know on the palate and you know people find this whole Journey, so you know we taste it in a Montiato that you know honestly tastes. I think the Los Arcos tastes like a more substantive wine than the Wellington, you know, and so what gives there but you know I think, and that feels very Spanish because it's not something they're invested in, you know, really codifying or regulating, you know, it just is what it is, and you know we live in the mystery of it all, you know.

But you know, that fluidness is really pretty and like fun to you know kind of tease apart, and so, the other Palo Cortado we have here is actually higher in alcohol than the Oloroso that we shared, so this is at 21% alcohol. And in this corner of the world, magically, in Solera, the wines get higher in alcohol than that doesn't happen in the world; it's not happening in England. So, we have eventually we're going to taste Alvear and for the sake of Pedro Jimenez as the wine's age they actually lose alcohol uh and they tend to be unfortified because it's hotter there and the grapes have more potential alcohol but um in the Chari Triangle as the wines age they gain alcohol and it's a great mystery to me um we spent as a staff the better part of uh you know weeks and months you know trying to you know tease out the logic of that um but you know when you learn Too much, you know it's a good time to treat it; you know, that's for another class, I guess, with an actual chemist who can, or maybe Chantal can opine, you know, about the particular magic of the various evaporation rates of alcohol and water. But at any rate, this is a single almacenista bottling. So you have these almacenistas throughout the Sherry region, and they're basically individual stockholders. So they create areas like a nursery; your own small nursery, and very often larger bottlers will buy from these single nurseries.

In this case, you have Cayetano da Pino, which itself was a huge brand that's fallen on hard times. It actually supplied to the Spanish royal family, and they are particularly famous for their palo cortados. In this case, you have a palo cortado from Jerez that is, you know, richer and more unctuous than something like the Wellington, and, you know, has some of the depth. And the length, even, of the Oloroso that we tried before. And, you know, for the sake of that Oloroso, it should be said that El Maestro Sierra, you have this imprint, this terroir imprint of their bodega. And their bodega is actually at elevation in Jerez, which is significant because it gets this cooling influence from that elevation. And Lustau's bodega is much closer to the city center.

And because of that, you know, there's less of a cooling influence there. And, you know, this whole kind of intermixing or mingling of, you know, that vineyard influence. And, you know, sherry is a wine of the soil, but then it is a wine of the bodega as well, in a hugely fascinating way. Chantal, are you familiar with the Almacenista bottling? Oh, yeah. I mean, that's what's so amazing about Lustau in general, is that they are the one main bodega that really helped introduce the rest of the world to the tradition of the Almacenista bottlings, because they are just independent wholesale warehouses, essentially. And I had this once and I wish I could say I've had it more often than that. So you'll have better TC notes and I will for this one, just so you know.

I am familiar with their more common Palo Cortado, which in that similar vein to the Los Arcos and also their Oloroso, it has that fuller vibe, very different from the Wellington. Yeah, for me, this is muscular and penetrating. So, you know, you get a sense of the fullness of alcohol on it, but then, you know, the, you know, the local terroir, it's just extraordinary. the acid is raging just like a little like with va to it it uh you know uh it is a wine that you know feels every bit as muscular as you know um the most audacious red um but then has this you know kind of like bright briny um influence that you know you would never expect of a standard red wine and you know it leans even more into that like beet bullion um you know terrain um but you know it's all base you know whereas the wellington is more delicate and treble um you know and and so you know there's there's something you know um you know much more i i i feel like i revert to these gendered tropes too much but there's just something more masculine about it uh to me uh than Than something like the Wellington, which just feels you know prettier, um, for lack of a better word, um, you know, and more easygoing, um, you know. The Cayetano is just a much more substantive wine, you know, and I tend to think, you know, in terms of the kind of things I want to eat them, you know, these wines with, and you know, I want, you know, I want like a hanger steak with the Cayetano, whereas, you know, the Wellington, you know, seared scallop or something like that, you know, feels like it would be, um, you know, a perfect match. So, um, yeah, I guess, you know, the difference between surf and turf would be another way, um, to encapsulate uh, the Two of them, and then, uh, lastly, um, you know, for the sake of these flights because Zoe's gone awol on me, um, we have, um, this Alvear and this comes from a different, a different region, um, entirely, and I'm going to pull up a broader map of the region here, uh, Chantal, but, um, you know, I want to talk about, um, you know, this kind of off the off the beaten path.

So we have the shared triangle, um, that we, you know, have have broached and discussed, uh, for the sake of this lesson, and then we have this other region which is like in Montia, and, um, you know, what grapes are we dealing with, uh, for the sake of this particular wine, Chantal, so yeah, you're further. Inland, and you get less of that poniente influence and more of the levante, and it's drier. And you're 100% Pedro Jimenez PX grapes, and it's Montia Maria's right, so it's not sherry. Um, but funny amazing relationship with sherry country is that like a good 90% of Pedro Jimenez grapes are they're sourcing it from this region, and then aging it to create PX's which are sherry.

But Bodegas Alvear uh is what you're pouring, and I've been there, I've been to a few places, Bodegas and Montia, and Alvear is brilliant, and they um, they explain to me a lot of really amazing things, and they also have the really cool uh, I don't know if you know. Where tinajas are, but they actually still incorporate the use of tinajas for like fermenting um so that is a ceramic uh aging vessel alert those are traditional Spanish amphorae and uh so 100 Pedro Jimenez grapes and the Pedro Jimenez grape actually has a lot higher acidity and sugar levels so you get a natural fermentation which goes above 15 there's no fortification so they don't actually fortify their wines when they're creating um their PX's well that's the confusing thing right we call it PX but in Montia everything is made from PX but the style which is also called PX is because they could make a pheno right.

there's the alvear pheno they have a couple different versions a lighter one from like cocktails and they have one that's uh a little bit more meaty but nothing is fortified is what's what's really important there yeah and you know my favorite thing about this wine is you know the balance of it uh px is um a hedonist dessert wine it is you know candied um it pedro jimenez is great that you know takes on sugar um and ripens readily um in a region in montia mariles that you know um invites ready ripening but um you know this is a wine that doesn't descend into you know obnoxious treacle you know cloying you know drinking syrup Territory, there's something refreshing about it. Uh, welcome back.

Um, tasting notes on the Palo Cortados and uh, the PX for you, Zoe. Take it cool, so I'll start with the Lou style, the um Alchemista. Um, I thought that that was like, that perfect balance of like savory with all that veggie plus um, that like Christmas cake spice, got some more like peachier flavors to it. But it was like really, you know, savory. The uh texture of it was really nice and opulent and waxy, which I really love. The Wellington Palo Cortado was like just very flamboyant to me, um, like the quality of the fruit was so sour and it had like a lot of... I don't I know, like, brighter I have like candied nuts burnt orange zest um but it like it just has that fruit quality that is so ripe, I think that I wasn't expecting of like that's why it was just so loud and so unexpected to me.

Um the LVR is like the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world, just figgy pruney ginger snap cookie. I want it over vanilla ice cream and/or just in a glass or by itself; it's lusciously sweet and I don't care. Chantal, let's talk pairings, you know what? Do you like to pair with you know uh the Pedro Jimenez's of the world? To me, I don't know, I don't know, I don't... and you know what do they do? They pair with them in Spain or? Do they just drink them alone? Oh, no, they definitely, they do, definitely do exactly what you think they would do. They poured over ice cream; they have it with blue cheeses, um, and and they have it with dessert chocolate.

And that's generally what PX is being paired with in Spain and a lot of places that are drinking it in general, as far as the other styles are going, you know, um, I mean, I got, I have, I always put a shout out for Amontillado and duck, and roast duck, I love that pairing. Yeah, and I think, I mean, the Palo Cortados would do the same thing, you know; they scratch the same itch. Um, and I actually will, I will say that I see a roast Duck, and I raise you um uh Popeyes fried chicken uh, I think you know uh, Popeyes. And a really good bottle of um, you know Amontillado Palo Cortado is just one of life's great joys um, and it should be said I think you cannot knock Fino and fight chicken though oh really no, I've never I've never I've never gone there I've always just I've stopped at Amontillado.

I need to try Fino and fried chicken maybe white meat maybe more white meat than dark meat for Fino or uh yeah yeah um, you know but yeah I just I just you know if you get what if there's one takeaway from this lesson just just drink Sherry buy Sherry you know, to the extent that you know we as consumers exercise you know um kind of influence uh for the sake of the invisible hand you know the more you buy sherry the more people you know will offer it and it is just so underappreciated on you know still um you know i think i think people in the know get tired of people saying that sherry is underappreciated but it's still underappreciated it hasn't you know um you know it definitely hasn't jumped the shark yet um so you know just buy it just drink it um you know to the extent that you're worried about you know just grab a bottle sure you know the the finos the manzanillas that they are a little more delicate You know, you should drink them within a few days, within a week, certainly. But the Amontillado, the Palo Cartado, and the Alorosos - that they can hang out you know for a couple weeks and they're still fucking delicious, um, and sometimes they'll improve, um, you know, sometimes they'll open up. So I think, you know, if there's one takeaway, just just seek it out, just drink it. Chantal uh, how are you? Um, so it should be said, Chantal got her beautiful headset from um, our good friends at Lou Stow, so obviously this is not her first uh, you know, virtual Sherry lesson but um, how are you spending the pandemic?

I'm spending the pandemic with my cat mostly. And I'm trying to upkeep my website which I created back in April, in response to being in a pandemic and quarantined. It's CocktailsForEndTimes.com, and I started writing a blog, which you know, I've always meaning to do that forever. Also, I set up a really easy form you can fill out that just says, 'Hey, fill out this form.' It tells me basically what your inventory at your home looks like, and then I craft cocktails like custom recipes for people. And uh, I also do classes, right? So people can email me and ask to set up private Sherry classes cocktail classes. Um, it's basically what's been keeping me going throughout the pandemic. And I'm very thankful for everyone who's checked out my website and ordered some cocktails from me.

I've also been working with a lot of people who have been working with me on my website, and I've been working with authors – uh, and because I love reading, which is why we're simpatico here; we're huge book nerds! And I've been working with a few authors; they send me their book, and then I create a cocktail based on their book for them. They use it for their own promotional purposes, which is also awesome. And I hope more authors continue to do this and send me more books. Uh, you know, if people are interested – uh, you know, reaching Out to you about um, a you know, especially curated cocktail experience, etc. And I think that's a great way to get your uh website into the chat there and uh, we'll certainly follow up with that on our recap, um, and uh, you do uh, so you are the U.S. ambassador uh for U.S. Sherry Week which is earlier this month and then uh, you typically celebrate Bloomsday did you Bloomday uh this this year as well oh no, Bloomsday was back in the summer and I didn't really have a venue or things quite suited out at the time uh, I wasn't as comfortable to figure something out there so I didn't do Bloomsday, I um, I celebrate other things like Aquavit Week and Just Sherry every day versus just Sherry week, yeah yeah, every every week is Sherry Week exactly um so uh Zoe, we're gonna let you run the roost here uh for the sake of the remainder of class but I'd be remiss if I didn't see you all uh with a bit of verse so uh for those of you not to know um every time uh we release one of our uh employees into the wild um they get a little bit of a break and then we'll get uh a parting uh poem uh Zoe has been uh with us for a good long while but uh for the sake of uh Tail Goat Wine School um and for the sake of Revelers Hour um she is part of our DNA uh we asked her to be part of the opening team uh she has bravely stayed on through pandemic and i've been continually inspired uh by her spirit of resilience in the face of you know both personal and professional uh turmoil um and the good cheer that she's uh brought our way uh every every day and i will miss the fuck out of her um so uh without uh further ado uh a bit of verse uh uh to see you out zoe um this is from rita duff uh rita was the first um uh black poet laureate uh stateside um she is awesome uh she uh got fulbright uh to study german uh translates german poetry and writes some of uh my favorite uh poems um you know in uh modern era this is called testimonial uh back when the earth was new in heaven Just a whisper back when the names of things hadn’t had time to stick, back when the smallest breezes melted summer into autumn, when all the poplars quivered sweetly, and rank and file the world called and I answered; each glance ignited to a gaze. I caught my breath and called that life’s wound between the clouds and the sky, and the wind between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet. I was pirouette and flourish; I was filigree in flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn’t know their names? Back when everything was still to come, luck leaked out everywhere.

I gave my promise to the world and the world followed me here, uh Zoe, um, everything. Is still to come for you, uh, we wish, uh, the world, uh, for you to follow, uh, we're in the middle of a pandemic and we're in the middle of a pandemic and we're in the middle of a pandemic, wherever you show your promise, uh, we will miss you but you will always, uh, have a home, uh, virtually, uh, and physically uh at Tailcoat and Revelers, uh, we love you, cheers, uh, it's everyone at home alone together, cheers. All right, so we've been neglecting the commenters, what do you have for us? Push on! Test has been killing it and answering a lot of the specific questions, maybe that's, uh, maybe it comes with a headset, maybe that's what I need, maybe if I had A headset, then I'll be able to do both at once, but uh, yeah, it's all about questions. Do you have the maybe you have the cat whispering into your ear too? It could be like a uh, a Cheshire thing happening that's good. Um, did you um talk about the vine space and how uh, how far apart they were and how that looked a little unique as opposed to like regular vines that we're used to seeing and is that indicative of palomino specifically when from that photo that we saw or am I just not in the know? That's a good, that's a good point. Um, so we did not talk about that at all.

It's a very astute comment um, uh, vine spacing um, is kind of a nerdier topic uh, that. We don't typically touch on that's more of like Levy's domain for the I'll turn to that crowd, uh, but um it's it's worth touching on so it should be said that by law sherry's harvested by hand, um, and uh, that is more um a Marxist kind of let's give the workers something to do paradigm than it is a um kind of quality uh statement, um, and they're actually it's harder to get people to harvest by hand than it used to be, um, it should be said, um, the closer your rows are together, the more they're competing for resources, the lower the yields tend to be on an individual plant, um, I'm going to share the uh picture of the vine rows here, um, these are Uh, wire-trained traditionally, um, in sherry the vines would have been bush-trained.

Um, can you speak to uh vineyard spacing um in uh the Sherry triangle? Chantelle, well yeah, I mean keep in mind that because of the the hot hot sun and the terroir that you're at, and how the Alberita soil does create reservoirs of water and you don't want to have super close vines because you're competing for these little reservoirs and you need that kind of thing spaced out. It's just speaking to the the natural conditions needed for that type of hot sun and water way, way below the earth um yeah, and Alberiza soils are really kind of amazing. um uh limestone soils in general are pretty remarkable so uh alberita um you know scientifically consists of at least um 30 active limestone there are certain types they're actually get really if you want to dive really deep actually subtypes of alberita some of which contain up to like 80 percent worth of active limestone which is basically you could write on a blackboard with that that's just chalk which is madness um and the cool thing about these soils are they both shed and retain water um so by uh volume they can retain about 25 percent of their volume um uh worth of water um when they're inundated um but they also Kind of readily shed it, um, in excess of that, so it's just kind of perfect, um, environment as such, uh, for grape vines, um, and then they regulate nutrient exchange in a way that, um, ensures the health of the vines and also ensures high acid, um, in the resultant wines, which is hugely important, um, in southern Spain because you know the natural inclination this far south, this close to the equator would be for flabby, um, you know unremarkable, you know kind of wines, and the chalk, the Albariña, you know allows for, you know these zippy, you know high acid wines. It should be said they also cheat, um, in, in Sherry, so, uh, traditionally and into. The modern era, traditionally they would have added gypsum to the grape must, uh, uh, typically straight off the vine. They add tartaric acid so, um, sherry is not broadly speaking a natural wine, everybody freak out, you know, oh, um, whoa, wow! They're adding tartaric everybody freak out, um, but it just isn't. They add acid to it; they do almost universally, um, I feel like, you know, pretty much everything we drink or we've had today has had tartaric added to it, like with the exception of the Paardenkoem, because it doesn't need it, but like it just is, it works, get over it, you know, um, there was actually the original natural one of them.

original natural wine health scares was in the late uh 19th century when the english promulgated this notion that um which it wasn't um but you know this notion of naturalness and wine is ages old um and you know has been alive and well in cherry um for a long ass time um but uh yeah uh they you know adulterated and and again you're dealing with something that like cherry is like this really cool intersection of nature and nurture like it wouldn't exist without both imprints and it needs both things what else you guys have um did you touch upon how alcohol um maybe the uh depends on style and yeah like obliquely um uh uh you want to talk about that just in terms of so, um, we make so like in the life of a sherry, um, we make a base wine, so typically uh palomino comes off the vineyards at potential at pretty low potential alcohols, so potential alcohol just refers to the amount of sugar in the grapes, so when they come off the vineyard, um, if you vinify if you if you you know um fully uh ferment um the available sugar in the wines they can make alcohol up to a certain percentage and palomino comes off the vine at a relatively low percentage uh uh historically um you know somewhere between 12 and 13 percent um, what then do they do when they're making fino versus Oloroso Chantal, so it's like that first classification, so the right, so actually right about now is usually although the harvest was super early this year, like I think it was in July, it's never been that early before, but um, typically at the end of November, typically now is when the fermentation just like the musts is basically done and they're about to make their first classification where they decide if something's going to be pursued as a Fino or something's going to be pursued as an Oloroso so they're always deciding if they're going Fino or Oloroso and then after that they figure out what happens then we go does it you know become an amontillado does it just become fino does the uh the fino become a palo cortado does the oloroso become something we want to keep adding and age further and do we want to take this oloroso and blend it with a style of sherry to make it sweeter blend it with px and create a medium or a cream and so the first initial thing is fino or oloroso and if it's fino then they fortify with that if it's oloroso they fortify to 17 because at 17 flor will not live but at 15 flor will still thrive but no other things will live because that's why it was called flor the beast yeast but in terms of alcohol we're asking about what happens to alcohol over time there's a few different scenarios depending on the style so fino the yeast lives on top of the wine and it's eating the sugar out of the wine which is why you get such a dry wine with a final product of less than a gram of sugar per liter but it's also eating alcohol so fino this beast yeast is a i'm sorry flor the beast yeast i like to call is feeding off the sugar but also the alcohol so over time the alcohol and sugar levels are going down and now you have to that's that's a little sword there right you have to make sure you fortify to keep to keep the wine at 15 because if it gets less than 15 Other things could grow other things that won't make Sherry taste or smell nice, so you have to actually constantly monitor it and fortify it back to 15 so that it continues to go so now if you have an Oloroso, you can keep the wine at 15 because if it gets less than 15 other things could make the wine at 15 and burn it. And if the rice gets 2.5, you're gonna have to keep that full point and do the whole thing over again.

So this can be helpful, especially with Billight soil. Also, mentioning it maybe if you could just you know decide which oring Holly ended on bringing an interesting idea or anything I that can k it can make a new place. Here and there as well or something I just hit record to just use my Tenga and and sort of from the start of my trabaj again here I was a very curious about the Key Palmer part because I was just wondering like what's the deal with thumbing a lot of your whining for blush and the general composition things like all of that but that being said I think probably eHeart appreciate it, Miss Ralston. I think it's really interesting um you all know you group happens right so Sherry is not a highly alcoholic spirit right so it's not evaporating at the same rate that's something that is 40 alcohol or more is evaporating and what's actually evaporating quicker is water so over time you get a concentration of alcohol a concentration of the sherry and less water and you get things like dry extracts which is why a lot of older sherries are really thick in the mouth and and if they're super super old they're so bitter and a lot of times that's also why they'll blend in sweeter sherries to sort of balance it out so those are two situations that in terms of regulation of what happens to alcohol they they make adjustments for uh did i answer the question i think i answered no it's awesome it's great and i think you gave people like uh like floor is the ultimate goldilocks So, you know in Spanish, they'll say that like at 14 and below alcohol the floor faints, so like it will it doesn't have enough to consume it kind of dies off, and it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's all sorts of like, you know the kind of microbiological actors you don't want to invent. But then you know at 17, you know it it you know kind of falls off too, so it has this really narrow band.

And the fact that in this small corner of the world they've been able to cultivate it, it's just this like minor like minor miracle, yeah it's like what we had 3,000 years of history, a whole bunch of time for them to sort of figure. out what to do and how to keep things working and how it was the most natural thing to do and so i think that's what's really it's always fascinating to me like what you know individual cultures spend their time on and i'm grateful that you know someone spent their time on you know this like thin veil of yeast on you know this you know wacky wine from a particular grape uh what else you guys up um that's about it but i did get you a parting gift and i think um it would be much more appreciated um if it is shared so i'm going to awkwardly pounce and then pounce back okay do i need to put on my mask All right, here we go. So you all should know that, you know, whatever strengths or weaknesses I have as an employer, um, you know, one of, uh, the least enviable, um, reasons to work with me is that I do not fetishize wine keys. So there are sommeliers that spend, you know, hundreds, if not, you know, four figures on a wine key. And I treat wine keys like cheap sunglasses, which is to say, I leave them all over the restaurant. I lose them to the extent that I don't even really like having one on me regularly. Um, and so I'm notorious for throughout, service, um, asking servers or their wine keys, uh, naturally, um, you know, I, I imagine like, uh, uh, upon a request, Zoe has given me, uh, the gift of a takeout container full of wine keys, uh, emblazoned with, uh, individual, um, I imagine, uh, individual, um, uh, turns of phrase, um, derived from, both my tasting notes and, uh, derived from, um, class as such. I, I feel like I should, I should read these, but I also want to invite, uh, the 75 plus people, uh, to tune out now, uh, because maybe this will be like a, a Bob Ross style, um, uh, play us out, uh, kind of moment. Uh, Chantal, uh, thank you so much again, uh, for joining us. You fucking rock. Um, yeah, this was, this was awesome. Uh, thank you all at home, uh, for, for wrapping your holiday weekend, uh, with, uh, Zoe. Uh, we love you.

Thank you so much for the gift. Um, I'm just going to read these out. Uh, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to play it out, uh, with, uh, reading of the wine keys. So kick it Kermit. Riesling van camp absorbing the soil. Oh, sorry. Absorbing the soul of the skins. Uh, never 86, the whimsy. Oh, I like that one. Glue, glue. Of course. Um, if loving it is wrong, I don't, there's gotta be, there's gotta be a follow-up want to be right, but, uh, uh, let's not kill the Lily here. Oh, that's a good one. Um, uh, philosophical beef with the court, which was vindicated. It should be said, um, everyone knew, uh, the court was full of a bunch of smarmy assholes. And, um, now there's, there's additional evidence, uh, raging acid, uh, pulling a thread. Champagne flutes are bogus. They, they absolutely are. Um, dancing to architecture, uh, big up to Frank Zappa for that one. Uh, one of life's great joys. Um, uh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, all Riesling all the time. Cartoonishly beautiful. Wine unicorn, kick-ass female winemaker. Let it be known. And of course, closing out, uh, for everyone, uh, rally the troops. Excellent question.