Can sherry ever become cool again?

UK sherry sales have been falling for years - but now the bodegas are targeting a new generation of drinkers. Plus: what I've been drinking recently

Adventures in sherry: left to right, the kind of drinkers targeted by last year's Fino 4 Foodies campaign; González Byass's bodega in Jerez

The launch of this year’s Tio Pepe En Rama fino a couple of weeks ago is a source of joy to sherry nuts across the land. As every year, this very lightly filtered style better shows off the wine’s nutty complexity and yeasty notes. It’s no surprise that since 2010, when Tio Pepe maker González Byass first introduced en rama – literally, “on the branch”, as if straight from the vine – it has become a style offered by most sherry bodegas. And yet still, sherry sales in the UK continue their long fall.

It remains an enduring feature of the British wine scene that critics and sommeliers are forever predicting a sherry revival, the moment when the golden liquid from Andalucía, whose versatility and value for money they have raved about, suddenly becomes cool again – but that it never does.

As the only friend I have ever converted to fino sherry tells me, before I made her try it, “I had such low expectations – I thought of it as a Christmas drink I had at my gran’s house.” The well-worn stereotype that it’s only people like your granny who drink sherry has power because, sadly, it is largely true (Croft Original, in the case of my late and very proper grandmother.) My parents assure me that sherry parties were all the rage when they were first married in the early 1960s. Now: not so much.

Sherry sales in the UK have been falling since the late 70s; official figures show that even between 2006 and 2023, UK Sherry imports fell by well over half. There was an uptick during the Covid lockdowns: sherry sales rose nearly 20 per cent at the back end of 2020, apparently part of a national boom in mixed drinks as we all stayed home. But they slipped back as life returned to normal: by 2022, sales had fallen below 2019 levels again.

British drinkers matter to the sherry industry not just because we are the largest export market, taking around a quarter of all sales. The Jerez bodegas have a centuries-long connection with British importers.

Indeed many of the older generation of producers were from part-English families, and grew up with British governesses. I was once shown around the Harveys bodega by sherry grandee Beltrán Domecq, then chief winemaker there. To my surprise, the post-tour tasting included mass-market leader, Harvey’s Bristol Cream. “It’s delicious,” exclaimed Domecq, in his perfect, 1950s public-school English.

Yet even he would have to admit that cream sherry is essentially an invention for the British market, more-or-less unobtainable in the bars of Jerez or Sanlúcar de Barrameda. And sales of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, over a million cases a year in the early 1970s, are a fraction of that today, with the brand having been sold on multiple times by spirits conglomerates.

So how to change sherry’s image? Industry analysts say that some sherries have sold better in recent years, no doubt helped by the popularity of tapas in the UK. While the British have not yet learnt to graze tapas - they still expect to order a full meal’s-worth in one go – small and sharing plates of snacks are now well established even in many pubs. And many Spanish dishes are now firm favourites (I wrote about M&S’s chorizo and paella croquetas here.)

Inevitably, Spanish food and wine is biggest in London. Indeed there was a moment a dozen or more years ago when tapas and sherry looked like they’d really arrived, with the openings of Barrafina (2007), Ibérica (2008), Pepito (2010) and José (2011), with Drake’s Tabanco (2013) even selling sherries from the barrel. But Pepito owner Richard Bigg converted it to a Rioja-themed bar last year, while Drakes closed in 2019. Barrafina and Ibérica have opened more branches, though they’re not primarily sherry focussed.

A major focus for the sherry Consejo Regulador, or governing body, has been campaigns around matching sherry with food. That’s a key theme of International Sherry Week, running in early November for 10 years now, and of the Fino 4 Foodies campaign last July. Critics like me have been going on for years about how well sherry’s saline or umami characteristics work with food: not just fino and manzanilla, which stand up to drinks-party nibbles like crisps and olives better than anything, but amontillado, oloroso and other aged sherries too.

One of the Consejo’s biggest efforts in this direction is the Copa de Jerez, an international cooking and wine competition. Chef/sommelier teams compete in each of the major sherry-importing nations including the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Denmark and elsewhere: they have to prepare both a dish involving sherry and ones matched with particular sherries. After national heats, the winners go forward to the finals in Jerez.

The Copa is huge fun and inspires some delicious creations and matches. The year I attended the finals, in 2007, the Scottish pair representing the UK carried off the main prize. Celebrations involved me, two prominent female British critics and the winning Scots shutting down a Jerez nightclub at 5am, with the chef chanting “Aberdeen! Aberdeen!” until we decanted him into a cab.

However, it’s open to question whether any of this has led to more drinking of sherry with food, at least on these shores. Last year more than 80 per cent of British imports were still mass-produced sweeter sherries (cream or medium); a little over three per cent were aged amontillado, palo cortado or oloroso. Even fino and manzanilla made up less than 12.5 per cent of the total.

Plus, with the aged sherries the Consejo would like people to drink with food, there’s the issue of expecting Brits to sip wine at 15 to 18 per cent alcohol throughout a meal without ending up plastered. In truth, it’s not just us: not even Spaniards drink aged sherry with meals. Even in Jerez itself, chilled half bottles of fino are the normal accompaniment to tapas.

Indeed to the extent that Spaniards outside Andalucía drink sherry at all – and in places such as the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia, they don’t much – they usually do so, like us, as an aperitif. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Britain has seen a surge in the popularity of other aperitif drinks, including Negronis and Aperol, if not yet a full-fledge aperitivo culture. Sherry is a logical fit in that world.

Part of the industry’s targeting of younger consumers is also the effort to talk up sherry’s potential as a mixed drink. Fino with tonic is making it on to some drinks lists. Likewise the industry is promoting cream sherry as a mixed long drink over ice – essentially a take on the rebujito, a long drink made in Andalucía from fino with lemonade or 7-Up and mint leaves.

Hard as it might be to imagine the capital’s nightclubs heaving with young people knocking back sherry cocktails, drinks guru Richard Godwin, author of The Spirits and the blog of the same name, pronounces himself a big fan. “Fino is the ‘secret ingredient’ in many prized Martini recipes,” he says - such as the Tuxedo, a gin Martini made with fino rather than Italian vermouth.

Personally I’ll be sticking to sherry on its own, no ice or mixers – fino as an aperitif, palo cortado as a vino da meditazione later in the evening. It remains one of the wine world’s great originals – and bargains. But if I were to inadvertently find myself on trend in future as I crack open a bottle of en rama, I suppose that would be a bonus.

What I’ve been drinking recently

Bàrbara Forés Blanc 2021, Terra Alta - Terra Alta is a relatively little-known Denominación de Origen in the far south of Catalonia, but it offers good-value wines. This white from a husband-and-wife team working organically is all Garnacha Blanca and pretty typical of the area’s style. It has herbal notes and quite ripe fruit but is nicely balanced and stands up to food well. I drank this in veteran Spanish/Mediterranean restaurant Moro, Farringdon, where I hadn’t eaten in a number of years: it was lovely to see the food and wine as excellent as ever (£11/glass in Moro; N/A in UK retail by single bottle.)

Kamara “Shadowplay” Xinomavro 2020, PGI Thessaloniki - a Xinomavro from just north of Thessaloniki, from a small producer committed to low-intervention winemaking. It’s pale in colour, very fragrant and and complex, with elegant tannins. Maybe a little pricey for what it is, but still. I enjoyed with revelatory Syrian food at the wonderful Imad’s Syrian Kitchen in Soho (Thirsty UK, Mad Atelier, from £25.) 

La Fiorita Brunello di Montalcino 2019 - La Fiorita owner Natalie Oliveros and her team were in London last month for a small tasting of this and her other wines, and they’re very good. Since taking over the property in 2014, she has moved towards a style that’s more approachable younger, with less extraction and tannins, and that shows nicely in this Brunello: sweet, fresh, clean fruit with notes of black pepper - very harmonious. Not cheap - but then high-end Brunello just isn’t (Stannary Wine, £57.85.)

• Transparency declaration: Richard Godwin and Ibérica CEO Marcos Fernández are personal friends. I travelled to the Copa de Jerez in 2007 as a guest of the Consejo Regulador, and have also previously visited Jerez as a guest of González Byass. I tasted La Fiorita’s wines as a guest of the producer.