Fortified Wine - Sherry
No name has suffered more abuse from Australian winemakers than
sherry. Indistinct and inappropriate as the names claret and burgundy
may be for Australian dry reds, their misapplication is as nothing
compared with the gross misuse of the Anglicized version of the Spanish
winemaking district of Jerez, in Andalusia. But before we become too
righteously indignant about this, let us first describe how a good, true
to type sherry is made.
Sherry is a fully fermented white wine, preferably made from palomino or
pedro xitnenes grapes, to which grape spirit has been added to bring it
to about 34deg proof (approx. 20 percent volume of alcohol). The
fortified wine is then matured in cask for about four or five years.
This, basically, is sherry and it is essentially an aperitif (appetiser)
wine. There are several variations, or refinements in sherry making and
maturing that turn the basic product into a delightful, delicate wine,
intended to be drunk in small quantities when there is time to consider
its qualities. Now try to relate this to the great deluge of appallingly
bad fortified white wine that has flooded the Australian market for
several generations, and continues to do so, and you will be amazed, not
at the Australian taste for the horrible muck that goes by the name of
sherry, but how the name ever came to be (mis) applied to it.
Some very good sherries are made in Australia; not many, but some. None
of them matches the fine sherries of Andalusia, as none of the
Australian dry reds matches a premier grand cru of Burgundy, for it is
not possible exactly to match an Australian wine of either type, or even
necessarily desirable to do so. The few good Australian sherries are
made in traditional Spanish manner, or a very close approximation of it,
and have a character of their own. The base dry white wine of the Spanish sherry is tasked, but left "on
collage", that is, the cask is only partly filled, leaving a large air
space between the level of the liquid and the bung. An Australian wine
so tasked would soon spoil, but in the air of Andalusia is a native
flower (or flor) yeast that quickly forms and grows on the surface of
the wine, excluding air. This yeast imparts to the wine the unique
nutty, flor flavor. In another respect also it is unique; it will
survive in the relatively higher concentration of alcohol that is added
to the fermented wine to bring it to about 26deg proof. Over several
years of maturation, the alcohol content of the wine increases, under
the influence of the yeast, drying it out to such a degree that few find
it palatable. Before sale, it is sweetened by brandied juice of the
pedro ximenes grape, the degree of sweetening determining the style of
the finished wine—find or amontillado. During the process of maturation
of Spanish sherries, younger wines are added as some of the cask is
drawn off. This is a system of blending, designed to maintain a
consistent character, known as solera.
The same basic process is employed by the Australian vignerons who make
our few top class sherries. At the Sutherland Smith Vineyard, All
Saints, at Wahgunyah, in northern Victoria, whose dry, distinctively
woody floor sherries are justly renowned, the process follows closely
the Spanish style, with a few minor, but important exceptions.
When grapes are crushed at All Saints they contain not more than 12deg
Baume of sugar. Completely fermented to dryness, the wine is run into
large oak casks for fining and filtering and then is fortified with
carefully selected spirit to about 26-27deg proof. Six months after
making, the wine is transferred to oak hogsheads (about 65 gallons) and
inoculated with specially cultured flor yeast. These yeasts do not exist
in the native state in Australia and it is one of the great scientific
advances of wine research in Australia that they have been so
successfully developed. After a year under flor, the All Saints'
sherries are blended for sale, as "Pale Dry Flor". Some are kept for
longer in very small casks to develop more wood flavor and a darker
color to produce an amontillado style, much drier than most other
Australian sherries so described.
Australian sherries made in this way are few. Seabrooks of Melbourne
market an excellent dry sherry; the Granfiesta of Buring and Sobels, of
Watervale, South Australia, one of the Thomas Hardy, South Australian
sherries and the Mildara "George", made at Merbein, near Mildura, are
examples of excellent Australian sherries. There are a few others, but
in comparison with the flood of sweet fortified white wine that goes
under the name of sherry in Australia, they represent a very small
proportion indeed.
As critical as we may be of the poor wines that masquerade under the
name of sherry, it is well also to remember the experience of Dr Max
Lake, Sydney surgeon and vigneron (CLASSIC WINES OF AUSTRALIA, The
Jacaranda Press): "Don't knock these wines, son", a wise senior
executive of a big wine firm once told me, "they pay for your good table
wines".
Oloroso, another of the traditional Spanish sherries, is so much
stronger in alcohol that even the flor yeast will not survive in it. It
is kept longer in cask, thus deepening its color even more than the
amontillados, and generally is sweeter than either the fino or the
amontillado, although some olorosos are very dry.
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