Light, graceful, and bone-dry, Sherry is a miraculous accompaniment to food--particularly seafood, ham, fried things, olives, cheeses and other salty nibblers that you might eat as a first course. Its flavors are slightly nutty, with a hint of bruised apples.

Background
Sherry is a wine made in the south of Spain, around the main Sherry town of Jerez de la Frontera. It is a fortified wine, which means that some extra alcohol is added to it, typically bringing it up to somewhere between 15% and 18%--more than table wine, but not as much as Port. It is usually made from Palomino grapes, but a grape called Pedro Ximenez sometimes plays a role.

Types of Sherry

• Most of the Sherry consumed in Spain looks like white wine, and has only a few degrees of alcohol more than white wine. This type of Sherry is usually called Fino Sherry, but a type called Manzanilla is often even lighter and crisper.

• When a Fino ages for some time, it picks up a light-brown color, and greater complexity. The nuts go nuttier, the suggestion of butter creeps in. It goes well with roasted birds, so consider a bottle on your Thanksgiving table. Your turkey will love it.

• Another Sherry category is Oloroso, which tends to be browner still, more complex with butterscotch and caramel--but not necessarily sweet. A lot of dry Oloroso is consumed in Spain; it is heaven with cheese and nuts. But this is the most confusing category since there's a lot of sweet Oloroso out there too--which is heaven with cheese, nuts, and brown-ish desserts, like creme brulée.

• To dispel some of that confusion for the American market, Sherry producers often add a sweeter wine, made from Pedro Ximenez grapes, to their dry Olorosos, creating a wine that is definitely sweet. Now we're in vicarage territory. The producers don't even mess around with the obscure name "Oloroso" on these labels--they just call the wine Cream Sherry. That's code language for "this is sweet!" It is probably the type of Sherry you've most often seen in your wine shop. It is hardly ever marketed in Spain, where they're too busy throwing back the cold, dry stuff with clams and squid.

• Lastly, some producers make a whole bottling out of that sweeter Pedro Ximenez stuff. They call it, not surprisingly, Pedro Ximenez. It is like dark, thick, very sweet prune juice--it's actually better than it sounds--and it wouldn't be out of place at Thanksgiving either, as long as you gave it something like a pecan pie to play with.

Recommendations
Now it’s time to head to your local wine shop and explore the variety of Sherry, one of the world's greatest, most idiosyncratic wines. One good producer Dios Baco, is imported by CIV/USA in Sacramento, California (800 669-1972), and the four types they're importing--Fino, Amontillado (pretty dry), Oloroso (pretty dry) and Cream Sherry (medium-sweet)--are among the finest examples of those wines available in the American market.

-David Rosengarten