Sainsbury's Lustau Fino Sherry

Le Tour est arriv��! Let the fun begin. The Tour de France kicked off (pedalled off?) yesterday with a new format encouraging a tighter, more assertive race.

Spain's Alejandro Valverde took the first stage, and my 'guest photographer' and chief Sherry pourer is a bit of a fan having seen him years ago cycling around Spain in the Vuelta years ago. I'm a big Sherry fan having gained a taste for it cycling across Spain.

Lustau is a big hitter in the Sherry world, and they've struck a deal with Sainsbury's to provide their 'Taste The Difference' range of Sherries. Not only does that mean great Sherry is available in the supermarket, but they also use 50cl bottles which are so much better for Sherry as the smaller bottle size means greater turnover in the fridge so fresher sherry. Hurrah.

This Fino is big and beefy, almost literally, it have that kind of Marmite style meatiness as well as a 'salt' level of Manzanilla proportions. There's bottle olive juice too, all in all a strong contender.

Look out for Valverde's bike today, he's brought along one to go with his new yellow jersey (that's confidence!), even the brake calipers are yellow.

Sainsbury's Fino Sherry

Making dinner at the weekend requires a glass of sherry, otherwise it's just another chore. There's usually a Manzanilla in the fridge, or a trusty Tio Pepe, but last weekend, the fridge was bare. OK, so there was food in there, but no sherry, not a drop.

I took a stroll around to the shops, and it's suprising how few sherrys are available in the average corner shop. I could find a section that looked like sherry - stuffed with large bottles saying things like Cream and Medium Sweet in big letters witha tiny little line admitting 'British fortified wine'. The best I could do was Sainsbury's own brand Fino.

It was OK, for an emergency, and allowed me to chop veggies and stir things in a reasonably relaxed state whilst listening to the commentary on the late afternoon match, but it lacked the zippy cheeriness I'd hoped for. It was cheap, it was available, and hyper-chilled it worked.

Medicine Cabernet

Good news on the health front. The good people of the Ukraine have developed a Health Spa where the daily regimen involves a doctor prescribing a perfect combination of wines for patients to sip through the day to cure all ills. Genius! If only I could find a medical insurance plan that bought in to the concept.

Until then I need to self-medicate. Doctors at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York are suggesting that Cabernet Sauvignon helps to ward off Altzheimers. The loveable folk at the University of Seville prescribe a glass of sherry a day to fight heart disease. Even the people at the University of Santiago de Compostela claim that red wine can help prevent lung cancer.

Sadly if I follow everyone's advice I'll pickle my liver before I live to see the results.

When only a Sherry will do

It's been a rough week for the Tour. I'm all in favour of binning Bad Vino, but I'd had such high hopes for the Astana team. Poor old Bradley has been sent home, through no fault of his own, having hauled his ass all the way through the mountains. I have no confidence at all that the current yellow jersey will make it to Paris untainted.

When life seems to be conspiring against you, there are times when only a Sherry will do. The good people at Gonzalez-Byass have realised that although Manzanilla is wonderful, it doesn't keep well and not everyone can pack away a bottle at the weekend. I picked up a half bottle of Gonzalez-Byass Superior Range El Rocio Manzanilla, which is a far more practical size.

It was pale lemon, with thick oily legs. It smells of olives and almonds and the seaside. It's bone dry with a refreshing acidity. Light and fresh with a definite salty tang, it's refreshing served very cold. At 15% alcohol it carries a kick, but not more than a big Aussie wine.

I'm an aunt, give me Sherry

Sherry is often considered a drink only suited to aunts at Christmas. As an aunt, I’m always happy to be served Sherry, and would hate to have it restricted to Christmas only. There’s often a bottle of Hildalgo La Gitana Manzanilla in my fridge.

It goes wonderfully well with olives, salted nuts, and anchovy related snacks. It’s made for tapas, so pretty much goes with any tapas dish.

I tend to have a glass whilst fixing dinner at the weekend. It greatly enhances the cooking process.

If you’ve never tried Manzanilla or Fino, but enjoy very dry white wines, you’ll probably love La Gitana. If you love Harvey’s Bristol Cream or Croft Original then there’s really no hope for you, and no point in buying Manzanilla.

Expect to pay about £6-7, and you'll have a wine worth twice that - this wine is a bargain. Be sure to buy from somewhere with a quick turnover. La Gitana helpfully has a 'bottled on' date on the rear label, opt for the freshest you can find and reject anything older than 6 months.

Say it loud, say it proud

I went to dinner with a group of colleagues this week. A fun evening in a Chinese restaurant, with far too much food. Most of us were driving and there was a good mix of red, white, pink wine and beer drinkers so we opted not to order by the bottle. I started out with tonic water, my soft drink of choice, but whilst our waitress ripped up a duck carcass before my very eyes, I ordered a Tio Pepe. I'd been surprised to see it on the menu, served by the glass, and it seemed an ideal choice.

The hilarity this caused at the table was as surprising as it was embarrassing. Everyone had some 'old person' joke to make and people enquired as to whether I'd need to shoot home early to feed my cats or finish my knitting (yes I knit, no I don't have cats). No other drink, except perhaps Campari, causes so much ridicule.

OK, so when my sherry arrived it was in a sake glass, it was warm, and it was well past its drink-by date, but I drank it with pride.

My name is Golly, and I'm a sherry drinker!

Tio Pepe - Wine or Sherry
Lustau Almacenista Oloroso de Jerez

Spain's finest

Germany Poland is the big game today, but as Spain put on a top class performance, I thought I’d crack open a bottle of one of their top class wines.

OK, with that opening sentence you’re probably not expecting a sherry, but bear with me. Lustau’s Almacenista Olorosa de Jerez is worth trying.

It’s clear and a medium amber with just a tinge of olive green on the edge. It has great legs, thick and long. The aroma is clean in a sherry-esque way. The nose is all cake raisins, toffee and almond. There’s orange peel and marmalade which gives it a sweet fruit cake feel.

It’s off dry, with a surprisingly crisp acidity. There’s just a hint of tannin, drawn from the extensive wood aging, although they’re very soft. It has a full body and pronounced flavour intensity. The baked fruit, figs and toffee carry through to the palate, there’s a touch of saltiness, in a good way.

It’s 20% alcohol, but it would be easy to forget that, as the flavour and acidity balance well. It’s best served slightly cool, perhaps with a piece of cake, or even a snack of cheese and olives.

Lustau is a relatively small, family controlled sherry business. Their Almacenista range reflects this as they are small batch wines, made from soleras of limited size. This tends to mean good quality careful winemaking and extremely careful aging, resulting in quite exclusive wines. What it doesn’t mean, surprisingly, is exclusive pricing. If this wine was French and had been treated with the same loving care for as long you’d expect to pay at least £20 for a half bottle. This is available for about £9 at local wine merchants, or you can go to Fortnum and Mason and pay £11 if you're feeling flush.

Tio Pepe - Wine or Sherry
Lustau Almacenista Oloroso de Jerez
Marketing Successes - Can Sherry Learn?

Fortified Drinking

I went along to a fortified wine tasting this week. It was great fun. We had a dozen assorted fortified wines all tasted blind. Lustau featured quite heavily with a Fino, a dry Oloroso, and a reserve Manzanilla. Overall the standard was very good, although the Fino tasted like it had spent too long on the shelf, a replacement bottle of Fino was far bouncier. The Manzinilla was bizarrely reminiscent of Bacon Frazzles, but in a surprisingly good way. I’d certainly recommend the whole Lustau brand.

Barbadillo was the other well represented producer. We tried a PX that was all figs, prunes and toffee pudding, and an Amontillado which balanced olives and nuttiness beautifully.

A couple of Martinez ports were good value options, but the star of the night was a Graham’s 1983 vintage. Perfectly balanced with well integrated fruit, it’s offensively good. Expect to pay about £40 a bottle. At that money it’s not for any old Thursday night, but it would finish off any celebration meal wonderfully.

Tio Pepe - wine or sherry

If you’re reading this thinking ‘eeuwwghh – sherry’, odds are you haven’t tried Tio Pepe. Unfortunately sherry has a horrible reputation as a drink for funerals and visits to elderly relatives.

If your view of sherry is sweet brown cough mixture served in comedy schooners then you’ve probably been drinking ‘British fortified wine’, a product made from grape concentrate and only barely fit for human consumption (a bar owner I used to work with fed it to his dogs on cold evenings to warm them up after a walk).

Tio Pepe is the market leader for Fino sherry, and has been for some time. Their distributor has worked hard to reposition it as a dry white wine and its working.

Sherry is produced in the Jerez region of southern Spain. Fino tends to come from the areas closest to the coast where the cool fresh sea breeze encourages ‘flor’, a yeast that grows on the top of the wines in barrel. It looks gross, rather like an asbestos lagging, but you never have to see it. What it does do is slow oxidation, keeping the sherry light in colour and adding a sort of light almondy nutty flavour.

Tio Pepe is a clear and bright straw colour. It’s best served straight out of the fridge so expect plenty of condensation on the glass. It has a fresh aroma with a teeny hint of saltiness, some almond and citrus, and a good wallop of yeastiness. It’s slightly oxidised in a good way, after all, it is sherry.

It’s very dry, balanced perfectly by its crisp acidity. The flavour of nuttiness carries through with a slightly more dried fruit taste and some green apple.

The flavour goes on forever, you’ll have another sip before it dies off. At 15% it’s no stronger that many Australian or Californian table wines, despite fortification, so you can have a second glass without falling asleep. Do serve it in a wine glass for full enjoyment.

Tio Pepe is great value. It should be far more expensive given the quality and minimum 5 years aging, but you can pick it up for £10 at Oddbins, or £8 at Tesco.

Enjoy your Tio Pepe as an aperitif, it’s perfect with tapas (duh!) and divine with smoked fish or fresh grilled shrimp. Once open keep it in the fridge and it will last up to a week, but no longer, it will start to fade. That said, you’ll want to drink it quicker than that.

If you go wild and buy a case, do remember to store them standing up, they stay fresher. You'll need to drink them over the next six months or they'll start tolose their bounce.

Enjoy.

Marketing successes - can Sherry learn?

There have been successes in marketing white spirits, champagne and branded wines to build sales. Why can't the Sherry market learn?

White spirits, especially vodka, have been increasing their sales significantly since 1999. Global sales of major branded Vodkas have increased 38.8% by volume during between 1999 and 2004 as younger people opt for spirits instead of beer. Branded gin has increased sales just 2.7% in the same time frame, but Bombay Sapphire has grown 41.6% Vodka’s ‘mixability’ makes it a perfect base for cocktail, making it palatable for people who don’t much care for the taste of alcohol, and brands have positioned themselves well in this area, encouraging consumers to ask for a brand name rather than a generic drink. Bacardi and Coke started the trend decades ago, but a glance at a cocktail menu sees brands increasing in dominance.

Brands in the white spirit market have increased sales by concentrating their marketing on purity, authenticity and originality. Beefeater London Gin has increased sales by 30% in Spain utilising a ‘Be Unique Be Passionate Be Yourself’ campaign and now a ‘Be creative’ element. This has moved it from its traditional staid image and opened up a younger market.

Champagne sales in 2002 were the highest since 1999 (when millennium fever boosted sales) and the third highest ever (Just Drinks Management Briefing March 2003).

Champagne buyers exhibit strong brand loyalty, although they may opt for different brands for different occasions, for example family celebrations, work celebrations, parties or romantic moments.

Champagne has carefully positioned itself in the UK as a premium product, available to all, resulting in a sales increase of 50% between 1999 and 2004 and Mintel expects the market to be worth £1.2bn by 2007. 'Champagne is still seen as a drink for special occasions, but to grow the market the industry needs to perform a delicate balancing act,' Mintel says. 'The challenge is to democratise champagne without shedding its long-standing and carefully-cultivated image as the finest sparkling wine in the world.'This is a delicate balancing act as the makers of Cristal Champagne have found. Their wine is the drink of choice of US rap artists, providing free product placement opportunities in music video and movies, however, they have no control over how the product is portrayed. Asked how he felt when rapper 50 Cent poured Cristal over his dancers bottoms Cristal's Managing Director, Frederic Rouzaud, commented "I would prefer to drink it, they should drink it."

Champagne is a brand in itself, and has worked hard as a region to increase volume whilst maintaining quality and the impression of luxury and exclusivity. White Spirits have worked hard on educating consumers about the history, or if necessary myth, of their products, to encourage new consumers to try the product, as well as introducing new ways of enjoying it.

Both of these options are available to Sherry producers and marketeers, let's see them in action.

Tio Pepe - Wine or Sherry
Lustau Almacenista Oloroso de Jerez

Tags: wine, Sherry, marketing

Why aren't we drinking Sherry?

Many people regard sherry as old-fashioned and suitable only for wedding reception lines, cooking or as a drink of last resort. Vermouth has carved itself a profitable niche as a cocktail base, yet other fortified wines have struggled to stay modern and relevant. This makes volume sales of well produced product difficult to achieve.

Hamish Anderson summarises the twin difficulties faced by sherry “Firstly, it’s deeply unfashionable… Secondly I doubt whether you have ever tried real sherry”.

Consumers are increasingly comfortable buying a wide range of wines, based on an increasing understanding of varietals, and gaining confidence from choosing new products from within a brand family they trust. However, with sherry consumers are less confident.

Sherry should have potential for growth in the UK. Britain is already sherry’s biggest market, but sherry sales are growing much slower than those of light wines. Jancis Robinson, the popular wine writer and presenter describes sherry as “The world’s most neglected wine treasure”. Whilst Matt Skinner, the Jamie Oliver endorsed wine critic claims “Sherry is back and it’s really, really good!”

There is therefore no problem with the quality of the product, and with sales declining elsewhere, availability is assured. Sherry shares an advantage with Champagne of having a protected name and a defined region for production, centred around Jerez.

Major advertising investment of the scale seen in the branded wine industry is unlikely. Diageo has sold Croft, and Allied Domecq has made little effort to promote sherry. Sherry produces have not been acquired by major players. Tio Pepe has relaunched itself, with some support from its parent Gonzales Byass, but a major push from its UK distributor, First Drinks. It has done so not by emphasising the intrinsic benefits of sherry, but by positioning Fino as a ‘very dry white wine’.

Try more sherry:

Fino & Manzanilla as an aperitif or with smoked fish
Amontillado with a light cheese or ham lunch
Oloroso as a kick start on a chilly morning before walking
PX with dessert, as a vin santo substitute with cantuccini, or as a scrumptious ice cream topping

Tio Pepe - Wine or Sherry
Lustau Almacenista Oloroso de Jerez

Marketing Successes - Can Sherry Learn?

Tags: wine, Sherry