Gonzalez Byass Sherry/Champagne Tasting

Drinking sherry in a fancy restaurant in historic surroundings is just about as close to my idea of heaven as it can get, and that's what I found myself doing on Friday afternoon.

the venue

The Midland Hotel in Manchester is where Rolls met Royce, and is a beautiful, commanding example of Manchester's Victorian history. Like much of the rest of Manchester, it was rundown over the years, but now it's once again an example of Manchester's new vibrancy and self-confidence. The French restaurant has been reinvented as a modern institution for contemporary cuisine by award-winning chef Simon Rogan, and last year Mr. Cooper's House and Garden opened, designed as a more accessible and less exclusive alternative to the French. It's still a pretty luxurious setting, and sat around a table drinking champagne I felt I could have been in a high-class Parisian restaurant.

the champagne

Gonzalez Byass distribute Deutz champagne in the UK, so we got to taste their wines as an opener. Deutz is an historic champagne house, dating back to 1838. They're known for their vintage wines - the 2006, which we tasted, came top in a recent Decanter tasting, ahead of perhaps more famous names. It was certainly an exceptional wine; fresh and lively, with power and structure from the Pinot Noir (60% of the blend), with complex yet delicate autolytic notes, with a beautiful finish of red apples and cinnamon. We also tasted the William Deutz 2000, which was still incredibly lively despite its age (it was only disgorged last April; Deutz have the welcome practice of putting disgorgement dates on the bottles). Its palate was more mature and developed than the 2006, though, a bit earthy, with mushrooms, bruised apples, and crème brûlée. My favourite wine, though, was the Rosé 2008 - biscuits and toast with delicate red fruits. A subtle, complex wine.

the sherry

This was where the afternoon got truly exciting for me: fifteen sherries, ranging from young unfortified wine to thirty-year-old PX. We started with Mosto Palomino, mosto referring to the unfortified base wine and Palomino the most important sherry grape. Quite how such an uninspiring wine can develop into a drink as wonderful and complex as sherry is difficult to understand, but it's all about the fortification, ageing, and blending. The mosto is taken from the first pressing of the grapes; delicate juice is classified as suitable for fino, more robust juice for oloroso. This mosto was quite full on, smelling and tasting of a roomful of apples, and was probably destined for an oloroso.

sherry rainbow

We then moved on to Sobretablas Fino, a wine still developing into a fino. It was only a few months old, fortified straight after fermentation, not yet transferred to oak barrels, and still in an early stage of development, with rough, aggressive, volatile flavours. This wine would turn into Tío Pepe, which we sampled next. It was extraordinary to trace the gestation of the fino, from a simple base wine, to a volatile young wine, to one of the greatest drinks in the world: fresh and delicate, yet full and mature, with flavours of apples, wood, nuts, yeast, and chalk, I don't think there's a drink I fall in love in with so easily as a fino.

Tío Pepe's probably the most famous fino. The firm now known as Gonzalez Byass was established by a banker back in the day when there was more money to be made from sherry than banking. Although he knew about money, Señor Gonzalez knew nothing about sherry and enlisted the help of his uncle, Pepe, who promised to help but only if they made a pale, dry, and deeply unfashionable style of sherry. That drink's still called Tío Pepe. Gonzalez Byass's rep, Paul, who guided us through the tasting was proud of the drink and rightly adamant about how it should be drunk: chilled, in a white wine glass, and with food. 

The structured tasting continued with Viña AB Amontillado, a style which began life as a fino but is refortified to kill off the flor, and then is aged for a further period of time to develop oxidative qualities: in this case, the wine was aged under flor for four years, followed by a further six years of oxidative ageing. I loved this wine: it still had the woody delicacy of the fino, but with creamy apples, caramel, and vanilla.

The next wine was, at thirty years, a very old amontillado. Del Duque was described as being like an antique shop and was really leathery - perhaps too much so. We were able to compare this to Cuatro Palmas, a special blend of four different unfiltered wines of up to forty-five years of age. This was creamier, richer, not as drying, and more complex. Unfortunately, there's only enough wine left for two years' worth of bottling.

We then returned to the base wine and followed a different tasting path. The mosto we tasted was probably ready to become an oloroso, and we began again with the Sobretablas Oloroso, which was a lot more stable than its fino equivalent and was already tasting of raisins - it had begun oxidising from the moment of fortification. This was followed by Alfonso Oloroso, an eight-year-old wine which was probably a little too young, though it had nice orange peel and nutty flavours.

Perhaps the best wine of the tasting was the Leonor Palo Cortado. This had the unusual characteristics of a palo cortado - the delicacy of a fino and the depth of an oloroso - resulting in a unique profile of poached pears and dried fruits.

It was then that we moved on to the other important sherry grape, Pedro Ximénez, of which there was 25% in the Solera 1847. There was a little bit of syrupy treacle sweetness from the Pedro Ximénez, but it was balanced by the dry oloroso's nuttiness and dried fruits - a fresh, complex wine. The Apostoles Palo Cortado was another great example of palo cortado's unique personality, and I can see why it's a style that aficionados consider to be the greatest expression of sherry. This is a thirty-year-old wine, an oloroso and PX (15%) blended together when they were twelve. Rich fudge notes, with apricots - a great, if unexpected, combination.

We finished with the truly sweet stuff. The Matusalem Oloroso Dulce had not only a mahogany appearance but aroma, with a rich bitterness from the oloroso and dried fruits from the PX. Nectar PX was a young and not especially complex wine, dominated by raisins, currants, and sultanas. The final wine, Noe PX, was PX at its most intense and craziest: 450g/L of residual sugar, with intense, chewy flavours of raisins, currants, figs, and Christmas pudding. This is a great after-dinner wine - and one that's been used in wine and cigar tastings.

Gonzalez Byass are determined to make sherry fashionable again. With wines like these, I really hope they succeed.

Thanks, uncle Pepe