£15.99–£22, Carringtons Wines, Corks and Cru, Ocado, Hedonism Wines; half bottle £10.50–£12.95, many independent wine merchants
Next week is Sherry Week, which means sherry events in countries around the world, including 500-plus in the UK alone, but I would be recommending this dazzling Manzanilla Pasada En Rama whatever the week.
Good sherry is always complex, but Barbadillo’s pale gold Pastora is something else. Dry, pungent, yeasty and as fresh and salty as a sea breeze, it has flavours of walnuts, sourdough, Granny Smith apples, green olives and chamomile tea. Almost counterintuitively, it’s pebble-smooth and rounded and it packs all this into an airy, effortless 15% alcohol.
It owes its quality and character to the way it’s made and aged in Barbadillo’s cellars.
Like any Manzanilla, it’s a sherry aged under flor (a veil of yeast) that goes through the usual solera barrel system of maturing and gradual blending. But whereas most Manzanilla is aged for about five years, Pastora is aged for eight years; hence the designation Pasada.
It spends six years in Barbadillo’s cellars in Sanlucar, then two in a part of Las Pastoras bodega right on the embankment facing the river.
The final piece of the jigsaw is en rama, meaning it’s bottled without fining or filtration – the next best thing to drinking it drawn straight from the barrel in Jerez.
Sip it lightly chilled in a wine glass with the usual tapas suspects – olives, salted almonds, prawns, squid, jamón and other cured and smoked meats (including duck), chorizo, tortilla, croquetas, slivers of Manchego. Or try it with smoked salmon, sushi and sashimi, bottarga, salt and pepper squid, fritto misto or vegetable tempura. 15%.
Barbadillo Pastora Manzanilla Pasada En Rama, Jerez, Spain
£15.99–£22, Carringtons Wines, Corks and Cru, Ocado, Hedonism Wines; £10.50–£12.95, half-bottle, Vinvm, Ultracomida, Mumbles Fine Wines, The Fine Wine Co, Seven Cellars, The Wine Library, The Wine Press, Penistone Wine Cellars, Shaftsbury Wines, Taurus Wines, Martinez Wines, Theatre of Wine, Harrogate Fine Wine, Secret Bottle Shop, Vinotopia, Mr & Mrs Fine Wine
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