Palomino

Palomino is the grape of sherry, and it is a textbook case of a variety whose virtues are entirely a function of what is done to it. Grown on the albariza soils around Jerez de la Frontera — a chalk so white it reflects sunlight back into the canopy and so absorbent it stores winter rain for the dry summer — it produces a neutral, low-acid, unremarkable base wine of around eleven per cent alcohol. Nobody would drink it on its own.

Everything happens afterwards. The wine is fortified, then classified. Lighter, more delicate barrels are fortified to about fifteen per cent and left under flor, a living film of yeast that grows on the surface and seals the wine from oxygen while consuming glycerol and producing the sharp, saline, almost briny character of fino and manzanilla. Fuller barrels are fortified higher, which kills the flor and exposes the wine to slow oxidation, producing amontillado and oloroso — nutty, dark and dry.

The wine then moves through the solera, a tiered arrangement of barrels where a portion is drawn from the oldest level for bottling and replaced from the level above, and so on. No sherry is the product of a single vintage; every bottle is a blend of many years, and the system maintains consistency across decades.

Palomino's neutrality is precisely what makes this work. A more aromatic grape would fight the flor and the oxidation.

In the Canary Islands the same variety is called Listán Blanco and makes dry, volcanic, unfortified whites of real character.

The distinction between biological and oxidative ageing is the key to the whole category. Under flor — the living yeast film — the wine is protected from oxygen and develops the sharp, saline, bready character of fino and manzanilla. Fortified above about seventeen per cent the flor dies, oxygen reaches the wine, and it becomes amontillado or oloroso: nutty, dark, dry and considerably fuller.

The solera is a fractional blending system, not simply barrel ageing. Wine is drawn from the oldest tier and replaced from the next, cascading upward, so no bottle is a single vintage and the average age is a mathematical property of how much is drawn each year.

Sherry's commercial decline over recent decades has been severe, and much of the finest material is sold at prices that bear no relationship to how it was made. For anyone willing to drink dry, it is the best value in fine wine.