a sherry anyone...

Well we are a little off the track from the gardening world this week....but wine and food have always been up near the top of the list for this family and gardening creates produce, so there is a lovely link between the two somewhere there.
An opportunity arose to go to a sherry tasting recently and it was of course irresistable.
Sherry has always held a little bit of a fascination for me in the wine world and its been hard to actually find and taste a range of sherries in Australia.
I can remember the cream sherry and dry sherry in the glass flagons from the seventies but from my travels in Europe, I knew there was another class of interesting and lovingly made sherries out there.
Its just been challenging to find them and taste them in Australia.

But recently, one of our local itialian inspired food stores in hobart....Bottego rotello held a sherry tasting as part of  their producer nights series.

It goes without saying that it was interesting and informative.  The sherry and the lovely company representative were from Aecovi in Jerez in Spain - an important sherry producing region.
As we learnt about the production of specific sherries, we tasted a fino, oloroso and a pedro ximenez (PX) and they were superbly matched to just a little food to enhance the experience.

We had a fabulous gazpacho shooter with cold pale fino, a rocket, pear and subtle goat cheese salad, a strong but delicate ewes milk cheese from the manche region to match the fruity oroloso and a wonderful dark chocolate to go with the sticky dark PX.

I must say the oloroso was my pick and the one I would go back for to buy and serve on a regular basis.
We also had a little taste of two interesting sherry vinegars...one of which was fabulous used to marinate the pear for the salad.

It was a great experience and I now know lots more about sherry. The company was good, the food was yummy and there is now a bottle of sherry waiting in the fridge for a good dinner.

Bon apetite!