Bob and I love sherry. When we met all those years ago, Dry Sack on the rocks was his drink of choice. And I grew up cooking with sherry in marinades and sauces so had familiarization with the taste that prepared me to like a good amontillado a lot when introduced to it the year I lived in England. But even we who generally always have a bottle of amontillado or palo cortado on standby have fallen into the habit of drinking it as a cocktail or late, before bed, on a night when we probably skipped wine with dinner, have never really ventured past that into food pairing, mostly because our love for conventional wine doesn't leave much room for other things.
But for the past three days we've gone rogue, foodwise, with one bottle of fino and two amontillados open that we have literally been testing with just about everything we've put in our mouths, including cheeseburgers and PB&J's. Seriously--cheeseburgers. Call it 'immersion training'. Cost and schedule analyst by profession that I am, of course I kept records. Rating each item on a 1-5 basis in which three is neutral, we tested most food with all three wines even though by day three we already knew enough to skip the fino, or go straight to the fino, for the best match.
Several rules have surfaced. 1) Salt and vinegar is good. Virtually any time both are present, sherry's happy. 2) Tannins aren't so good. Where nuttiness works well, pistachios were 4's but raw walnuts only a 1 because the tannin in the skin is a flavor interruptor. And neither of us, in fact, though straight Marcona almonds, which you'd have thought a natch, were anything special. As part of a romesceau sauce? Great--but mostly because of the red bell pepper as that vegetable works hugely well with sherry, especially if a little salt and vinegar come along for the ride. Almonds alone? Just eh.
By the time Bob and I got around to last night's simple dinner of pan-seared steak and a green salad of soft greens in a dijon vinaigrette, we were fully prepared to find the amontillados a very good pairing. But we only poured just test pours as we've done all along--we had a conventional red wine (a young Washington cab franc) planned as our actual meal beverage. And so it was with some surprise that we found ourselves reaching for the sherry and ignoring the red wine, and we only realized afterward that we'd both done that. If we'd grilled the wine outside perhaps we'd have had a different preference, but the super-toasty Maillard effect really spoke to the nutty Amontillados, and I finally gave in and filled up my glass.
Methinks this tasting is going to be a game-changer. At least for some of us.
Anybody already a convert?
) Btw, a slight correction: the prune juice flavored motor oil were the PX's, not the olorosos. The two olorosos in the line-up were served with the steak and oxtail ravioli.