Indulgences - Sherry

Outlook bright and dry

T hose of us whose experience of sherry extends no further than the cloyingly unsexy fortified wine surreptitiously sipped from Grandma’s tumbler could be missing out. Today’s sherry comes in many different varieties including some as crisp and as dry as a good chablis. While there are a number of reasons for sherry’s somewhat jaded reputation, perhaps the most significant is that today the vast majority of sherry is still produced in the sweeter style. Older consumers (in the UK at least) are in part responsible for this situation, as it was their penchant for the sweeter and cheaper styles (culminating in a terrific thirst for “cream sherry”) which shaped the sherry market over the last 50 years. Still today, half of all regular sherry consumers are above the age of 65. To put the market into context, in 2006-2007 worldwide sales of sherry stood at 65 million bottles. The UK remains the largest market for sherry in the world accounting for 35% of the total produced, followed by Spain with 22%. The collective palate of the younger demographic is considerably less saccharine, which has seriously limited the growth of sweet styles.

Another notable reason for sherry’s poor global standing is that, until recently, many wineries around the world (particularly in New World countries) took extreme liberties when it came to interpreting international trademark laws. Wineries looking to effectively disguise “liquor” as “fortified wine” would simply add ethanol, sugar and caramel to the worst wines of the vintage and label them as “sherry”. Hardly the level of respect deserved of one the great wine styles of the world. Now with EU legislation doing its best to stamp out these practices, thankfully such misrepresentation is no longer commonplace, and the true sherry producers – confined to a small region in Andalucia (southern Spain) – are working to rebuild their tarnished reputation.

However, the single biggest obstacle to sherry’s success is a lack of consumer awareness about the host of drier sherry styles, which offer superb quality and value. But the situation is changing. In the UK, historically preoccupied with sweeter styles, sales of drier styles such as manzanilla (pronounced manthanea), fino and amontillado have climbed to around 15% of total sales. Gonzalez Byass, one of the most dynamic, export-focused sherry houses, reveals that in the UK sales of its tio pepe brand (a dry fino style) to 35- to 44-year-olds surged 80% last year. They also reported that “like for like” sales of their tio pepe brand were up 8.2% by volume, over the 12 week period ending 29 December 2007 – an exceptional statistic when you consider that the total sherry market had a 4.3% decline by volume over the same period. Gonzalez Byass puts much of its success down to the sophisticated approach they have taken to marketing to new market segments. Investing more than €520m over the last five years in the UK alone, they have honed in on the lucrative thirsty thirty-somethings, with the goal of adjusting their beliefs about sherry.

Market trends are also starting to move in Spain’s favour. Tapas is now well-known throughout Europe. Low-cost flights have made Spain – including Jerez (the heart of the sherry-producing region) – more accessible than ever. Foodies are now exploring more complex and usual wines, and drier sherry styles provide just that. Sure there’s still a lot of sweet stuff around, but leave those to the baby boomers, and start exploring the drier side to sherry.