Sherry is a yummy, warming winter drink. It also finds its way into lots of baked and cooked products.

I usually buy sherry when I plan to cook, so I do not want to spend a lot of money. I’m simply going to burn away the alcohol anyway. The 35 Sherry from Okanagan Cellars has a nutty quality which enhances many Asian sauces and marinades. Though it is sweet, it worked well in Oriental meatballs which called for a dry variety. This is a handy bottle to keep on your wine rack.

As a drink in itself, consumers will appreciate the rich smell of hazelnuts. Though it definitely warmed me up inside, the finish was a touch medicinal. Still, $7 is a good price for something better than cooking sherry and ideal for putting in your Christmas fruit cake.

As noted in an earlier article, I have plans to cook with my recently-purchased bottle of sherry. For two weeks we have been trying recipes from 125 Best Chinese Recipes by Bill Jones and Stephen Wong. Dry sherry (or Chinese shaoxing wine) features in several.

Tomorrow night we will try crisp-fried chili and garlic shrimp. This is made using prawns, of course, plus garlic, chili, sherry, green peppers and soya sauce. What I like about the book is that these recipes, while tasty, are simple.

For the shrimp there are just four steps. I have to wash, soak and dry some shrimp. Then I toss them in a mixture of cornstarch and seasoning. After that I heat my frying pan (should be a wok, but my skillet will do) and cook those little morsels. Finally, after emptying and wiping the pan I add garlic etc. and cook slightly before returning the shrimp and serving over noodles.

Oh, and then I have to prepare something else for my husband who does not like flavor in his food. Perhaps I can pair something from the wine rack with his cold cereal, just for the sake of presentation.

Armagnac

Thanks to Bartending for Dummies it seems clear: grapes are more likely to end-up on your wine rack than in a fruit salad. Honestly. I sincerely doubt that most grapes will ever meet another piece of fruit in their short lives.

Not that consumers need complain. The reason salads are thus challenged is that our round red and white friends become drinks like Cognac, Armagnac, Sherry, Port and so on. In fact, this has been the case for many centuries. According to the aforementioned book, Armagnac was being produced ‘as early as 1422′ in France.

Cognac is an ingredient in the well-known Brandy Alexander and less elegant sounding drinks such as The Incredible Hulk (again, according to the book. I couldn’t make these things up). The latter combines Cognac with Hpnotiq, the latter of which is made, in part, with the former.

One uses Sherry to create a Quarter Deck and a Dizzy Lizzy. Port plus a couple of other ingredients contribute to the making of a Corkscrew.

What I want to know is who gets to come-up with all of these fantastic names? I guess bartenders who, during their time at the bar, make-up these amazing and potent drinks, some of which become classics while others remain obscure.

I only have the book for three weeks from my local library but will endeavor to write down and try a few recipes throughout the year. It could take a while, though. My stock of spirits could never keep-up with the colorful and exotic (not to mention expensive) line-up at a cocktail bar.

Thanksgiving arrives early in Canada, perhaps for the sake of the farmers and turkeys who risk frostbite being outside all the time by November. We had a mild winter last time around so we expect to pay for it this year.

October 11th is D-Day for turkeys and pigs this year, while the ungrateful like me have decided enough is enough. We can eat turkey some other time, why put ourselves under stress to roast one and bake pumpkin pie during one of the busiest times of the year? The kids have just started school, piano, dance, swimming, youth group. I’m writing, teaching Sunday school, volunteering at both schools.  Am I nuts? No. Well, maybe a little, but smart enough to say that if my husband wants a turkey (and he doesn’t actually enjoy food, so the answer from him will be ‘I don’t care’), he can cook it himself.

This does not mean we’ll ignore the holiday entirely. Patrick will go fishing and perhaps bring home some nice trout, for which he and we will be very thankful. The girls and I will bake some goodies. Then, it is my plan to entertain some friends or relations with high tea.

That’s right, you heard me. In the U.K. we didn’t even have Thanksgiving. We celebrated Guy Fawkes which was way cooler because some people burned effigies (just glorified scarecrows) and went to Fairs to ride on bumper cars and stuff. Totally irreverent. Pat and I did that pre-kids and it was fun. On Sundays his mother had visitors, usually a gaggle of family (Pat is one of eight, all married), and we ate toast, hot cross buns, cake, cookies and cheese. We drank copious amounts of tea. If we were away we went out of scones with clotted cream, butter, jam and more tea. Pat would actually eat the clotted cream straight out of the little pot when we had put as much on our scones as we could and he still looks slim and trim. But I’m not bitter.

The challenge will be to my wine rack: how to combine pumpkin pie and apple scones with wine.  Apparently, Semillon, Riesling, Gewurztraminer and Cream Sherry are among a list of possibles. I’d go for the sherry because then I could use it to make Christmas fruit cake and have a warming tipple on a cold night. Then again, BC produces a fine assortment of Rieslings and Gewurztraminers. Meanwhile, Muscat was also on the list and I’ve been interested in trying the Barefoot version. I might even sneak out and give some to the local turkeys as a last drink just because even convicted murderers get one of those.

I love salad in the spring and summer. We go to local markets to pick up vegetables straight from farms within half an hour of our house, and even go so far as to grow a bit of green stuff in our own garden. Since I am not a big fan of processed food and preservatives that sound like engine cleaner, I like to make my own salad dressings too. My kids seem to like them. Poor things. They don’t know that real, fake food is supposed to taste better. They’re already thinking about their arteries and potential cell damage due to trans-fats. What have I done?
This summer I plan to add a few new dressings to my slim resume. They are generally oil and vinegar dressings with a few herbs or a bit of sugar. For a real twist I may use balsamic instead of white vinegar, or even apple cider vinegar. Whoo hoo. I may have to store a few interesting bottles of vinegar in my wine cellar, maybe throw a salad party.
For a change, how about a sherry vinaigrette to pour over a fruit and vegetable mixed salad? One recipe I found listed a sherry dressing mixed with dijon mustard among other things. Faye loves mustard. This could be a winner.  Another paired sherry with mint to top off a melon combo salad. I prefer the dijon I think. Mint on food? Makes me think of tooth paste.
How about a garlicky white wine vinaigrette? I can imagine pouring that over a light pasta salad, greek salad or cold chicken dish with fruit. Yummy.
I can also see my second-hand wine club wishing I would stop trying to use my wine up in recipes. They’re going to go into withdrawl or start drinking my salad dressing with a straw or something.

I know a lot of women named Sherry. Each of them spells her name differently, and their personalities vary tremendously. Sounds like the drink in question: each is a beautiful mixture of different qualities. In the case of the drink, in most cases darker tends to be sweeter, the inverse being true of light-colored sherries. This fortified wine originated in Cadiz, southern Spain, and has a long history. I used to enjoy a glass of sherry at Christmas when I lived in England, where the drink is found on many wine racks. I haven’t had a glass for a long time, but I favored a sweet, cream sherry. I chose to describe the following sherries because their names attracted my attention. That’s all, completely arbitrary. Just names that conjure images I like.

First of all, Pedro Ximenez. Just try saying that without asking someone who speaks Spanish. Have a good laugh. What a great excuse to go up to some attractive, Spanish-speaking guy: ‘please, could you tell us how to say (point to the name)’, and then could you say it over and over again?’ (bat eyelashes and swoon). The eponymous grapes give way to a dark drink with the aroma of raisins. Pedro Ximenez has a high alcohol content.
Palo Cortado is a mahogany liquid I’ve never come across. Dry, smelling of hazelnuts (yum), this sherry can be as weighty as 22%, so sip slowly.
Fino is a clear, light-colored drink. As noted above, light usually means dry, as in this case. Fino can have an alcohol content up to 18%. I zeroed-in on this name because I recently wrote about a tapas tour in Spain. One of the drinks participants imbibe during this tour, Fino, now calls to mind authentic Spanish dwellings, tapas, and the part of Spain less travelled by tourists looking for the Zoo or Warner Brothers Amusement Park.

Manzanilla is not just famous for green olives. They also produce a sherry which can only be made in coastal Sanlucar de Barrameda. This very pale and dry example of the drink can have a kick of up to 17% alcohol.
All of which sounds as far from being British as any Spanish drink can. Then again, what’s in a name?

According to the ‘Palate Press’ (who write about other stuff besides the Haiti auction by the way), Quady of Central California was voted as best US Winery in the 2009 London International Wine and Spirits Competition. Quady himself was surprised, but apparently these dessert wines do well in the UK. I was especially surprised to see that a mainly dessert-wine producer won this award, coming out of California, as California is better known for its Napa wineries, chardonnay, and pinot noir (among others). Dessert wine rarely gets the recognition that these drier varieties enjoy.
A quick look over their website shows that Quady is moving from purely dessert wines into muscat, port, vermouth, sherry and apertifs. These include the new Palomino Fino, an Amontillado style sherry which is bio-dynamically grown from Palomino grapes. Bio-dynamics is one of the more sustainable forms of agriculture, relying heavily on composting and an ‘holistic’ approach to the job. In the nose, the Fino gives off hazelnuts (I love hazelnuts). The finish is light and smooth. Another new bottle is Deviation, a sweet drink yet with a dry finish. On the page for this offering you will find recipes for cocktails to make with Deviation.
There are other wines too, but what I found fun about this website is the way it incorporates wine with food. They accessorize each other. There is a recipe section embedded right in the website. Clearly, these people enjoy a meal in the same holistic sense that they look after their vineyards. I also enjoyed the colors and designs of the wine bottles which were a fireworks display of joy. I would almost call it a ‘passionate’ website, if computers can do that word justice. Any of these bottles would add a beautiful splash of color to your wine cellar.

What a neat idea: the inhabitants of a major wine producing part of the world celebrating the New Year by eating 12 grapes in 12 seconds. Sounds easy, but apparently it isn’t. Twelve seconds may be a long time when holding your breath, but not when trying to shove food into your face. I can imagine my kids doing it (‘slow down, take small bites’), but under duress?

There are hundreds of grapes grown in Spain, so finding twelve different ones wouldn’t be hard I’m sure. For the purposes of this article, I’ll just look at a handful of these Iberian crops to make your wine-drinking tastebuds water.

Garnacha or Grenache is one of only a few that sounded familiar. This dark-skinned varietal is the second most widely planted of Spain’s many hectares of grapes. Bobal is also dark-skinned, resulting in deep red wines.

Tempranillo is on my list of wines to try in 2010, one vintner producing an inexpensive bottle avaiable here in BC. You may find Tempranillo elsewhere under the guise of Cencible, Tinto Fino or Ull de Lllebre. Macabeo is another grape with aliases, such as Maccabeo and Maccabeu, as it is known in France. The wine produced from this latter grape tends to have floral notes.

Palomino is not just a horse: it’s a white grape used primarily to make sherry.  Moristel, a.k.a. Juan Ibanez, is often produced for wine blends which are light coloured and floral.

Do these names make you long for sandy beaches and sunny, warm days? Bull fights and tapas? Even choosing a bottle of one of these from the wine rack would be like picking out a day of sunshine to open onto winter gloom. I’ve got a mental block right now, however: I can hear those words ‘sun’, ‘warmth’ etc, but I can’t picture them, not with my kids sledding and building snow forts on the front lawn. Maybe later, over a glass of Spanish sunshine.

Sherry is a fortified grape based wine traditional produced in Spains southwest growing region. The soil of the sherry growing region is very limestone dense and provides the distinct flavor of the sherry. Sherry has been grown in the region for over three thousand years so could not be considered a passing fad. The three main growing areas (Jerez de la Frontera, Puerto de Santa Maria and Sanlucar de Barrameda) produce approximately 20 millions gallons of fortified wine annually.

When they say sherry is fortified, that means they add alcohol to make it more potent. Compared to regular wines, sherry can have a base alcohol content of 15 to 18 percent. Sherry is aged rather like whiskey in wooden casks in a solera system. Meaning, the new wine is put into aged casks to embody a very distinct flavor. Each vineyard and growing region has its own distinct flavor and casks.

The sherry is aged for five years using the cask system during which time older wines are blended with newer wines to give the growers a wine unique yet uniform in taste. The bottle label usually has the original date of casking rather than the date of bottling.

Sherry comes in two main varieties: sweet and dry. Sweet sherries are perfect for dessert pairings. Dry sherries are sipped before or after a meal and are served chilled. Sweet sherry is served at room temperature. Working well with cheese, nuts or other nibbles,  sherry is usually served in small sherry glasses rather than traditional wine glasses.

The break down on sherry varieties is: Fino, Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez. The Fino sherry is light brown and has a nutty scent, perfect for roast chicken or roast turkey. Oloroso is also brown in appearance but has a caramel aroma and comes in dry, sweet and cream. Finally, the Pedro Ximenez is a very sweet sherry which some compare to a prune juice. Also dark brown in appearance, Pedro Ximenez works well with game and poultry.

Have at least one bottle of sweet sherry on your wine rack this holiday season for a conversation starter and after dinner sweet treat. It would also make a great gift for any friends wine rack.