On a trip to London last week, I tried to get a feel for how consumers might see sherry. Just ordinary consumers, not the sorts who buy wines from expensive West End merchants. Of course, this exercise was totally unscientific. In between errands and meetings, I dropped into as many shops as I could to get an idea of what a potential sherry drinker might experience. I stupidly forgot my camera at home, and the pictures my phone produced are simply not up to scratch for this post. So you will have to do with this picture of Tio Pepe and the amusing advert down below.

Anyway, the value wines account for the largest part of the steady decline in sherry sales and since most sherry in the UK (largest sherry market) is sold through the the supermarkets, these were necessarily my main ports of call. All the supermarkets I went into had house brands, which seemed to be fully representative, even including Amontillado and Oloroso wines (this surprised me). Tio Pepe was ubiquitous with Croft Original and Harvey’s Bristol Cream popping up in most places, including even smaller off-licenses (bottle stores), but not so much in the off-license chains, like Oddbins and Majestic. I’m certain if you ask any Briton to name a sherry, one of these three brands above will come up.

Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket, has their house brand produced by Zoilo Ruiz-Mateos (part of Grupo Garvey). The Tesco packaging did nothing for me (nor did “Bodega Jerezana” at Waitrose and Sainsbury’s “Taste the Difference”) but I was not really expecting own-branded goods to do much. I’m sure the wines in these own brand bottles are very good but I could not help thinking that buyers own brands can’t be doing sherry any favours, …

Gabriella fondly remembers when she was a child, sitting in front of the TV listening to Cookie Monster teach the alphabet, and on this particular day, words that started with the letter “S”. This episode is firmly ingrained in her head, because unfortunately, she couldn’t pronounce the letter “s” as a child, handicapped with a severe lissssp. Therefore, words like snake became th-nake and summer became th-ummer. Clearly, this doesn’t bode well when you’re watching your brother happily sipping on his vanilla shake and all you can come out with “Mom, I want a thake too!”

Well, today, we’d like to thank Grape Juice for hosting Wine Blog Wednesday, by celebrating anything directly related to a bottle of wine that begins with the letter “S”. Considering that we are in Spain, we thought there would be no better opportunity than to feature our favorite “S” word, Sherry! Eric Asimov recently published an article on this much under appreciated style of Spanish wine, claiming that, “… certain wines require more of an effort to appreciate than most people are willing to give and therefore are consigned to a form of marginal status.” We wholeheartedly agree with him, and are hoping that today, we can motivate you to get off your keester and enjoy a delicious and thirst quenching glass of sherry.

Osborne’s Coquinero is a wine that we both immediately fell in love with. Incredibly delicate, with a honeyed nose, while the palate packs more of a punch. We seriously want to drink this on the beach in Cadiz with a plate of fried marine creatures! The salty air on the …