Sherry At The Dinner Table

Posted by | Posted in Grape Adventures | Posted on 05-27-2013

I’ve always had a preference for spicy cuisines.

I enjoy eating and cooking various Indian and Caribbean regional styles, along with more fiery Sichuan food, and this is one of the reasons I drink so many German and Austrian whites — spicy curries, Jamaican jerk chicken, and Sichuan specialties such as a shredded baby lamb with green pepper simply aren’t the most friendly accompaniments for more delicate red Burgundy or Bordeaux.

There are certainly exceptions –at BYO Sichuan restaurants in New York, I’ve found smoked-tea duck to pair quite well with many old-world reds — but for the most part, Grüner Veltliner or Spätlese or Auslese Rieslings pair superbly with those cuisines.

Recently though, I’ve discovered that a range of dry sherries work exceptionally as wine pairings for such cuisines, and as I’ve started exploring sherry in more depth, I’ve been amazed at the range of different culinary styles that a dry Fino, Amontillado, or a Palo Cortado can pair with. A couple of bottles from the Equipo Navazos La Bota series (the ever-eloquent Brooklynguy writes more about them here) have been particularly eye-opening in this regard.

A few weeks ago, a good friend brought a bottle of the Equipo Navazos La Bota de Palo Cortado No. 34 to dinner at a Sichuan restaurant. We started with some milder dishes, a cold plate of cucumbers with scallions, and a tea-smoked duck. The smoky and umami elements of the duck matched the smoky nuttiness of the Palo Cortado, while the freshness and lightness of the cucumbers brought out more of the fruit within the sherry.

With spicier fare later in the evening, though, the sherry remained a remarkable accompaniment. I’ve found that spice tends to accentuate the alcohol in many wines and usually stick to lower alcohol German Rieslings with spicy dishes for this reason. Yet the high alcohol in the Palo Cortado was barely noticeable with spicier gui zhou chicken and shredded beef with green peppers (and copious Sichuan peppercorns), while the smoky, nutty and saline aspects of the sherry played off the higher toned umami and spicy flavors.

While experimenting with various north Indian and Sichuan dishes at home, I revisited a bottle of the La Bota Amontillado No. 37 that had been open for a couple of days and noticed a similar synergy of flavor between the smokier, savory elements of the wine and the food, while the high alcohol of the Amontillado remained well hidden.

In the coming days, I plan to open a bottle of the La Bota Fino No. 35 that I’m curious to try with similar fare to see how it pairs. It’s certainly been eye-opening for me, as in the past I’ve usually thought of dry sherry as an aperitif to have with salumi/nuts before a meal. Yet dry sherries such as these do seem to work remarkably well with a wide range of cuisines (Brooklynguy writes here about pairing Fino with Japanese food). And a bonus is that many of the top examples are far cheaper than their qualitative equals from other wine regions, with a full bottle of Valdespino’s Inocente Fino retailing for around $25.

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