I don’t know if this is the proper category. I’ve been buying sherry wine for years, Taylor and Fairbanks, and all of a sudden, the shelves in every liquor store in my area are bare. No one seems to know why, other than ‘it’s a production issue’. I have asked the company, looked online, getting no answers. Any way to find out what is going on with the production of sherry wine?
I can find Fairbanks sherry for sale online anyway, both dry and cream. So maybe it’s more of a distribution than a production issue.
Available everywhere here in Portland.
Strangely, I’ve occasionally looked for sherry just because it’s often a useful ingredient to add to some soups. Most of the liquor stores closest to me have a very limited selection (sometimes just one brand of cream sherry and nothing else) – though all of them had lots of different kinds of port. I attributed that to sherry not being a very popular drink any more, and dry sherry being especially hard to find, but checking the liquor store network, there are many varieties available just a short drive away. In fact one not too far away has Dry Sack, one of my old favourites from many years ago.
So I’ve found two interesting articles.
(Tracking sherry’s popularity and race to the bottom of quality with high volume supermarket sherry and a recent increase of demand driven by higher end products.)
And
(The demand for making large volumes of sherry NOT fit to drink to season casks used for Scotch production.)
Putting them together I’d hypothesize that middle market products are choosing to go to one or the other end of the market? And higher end might be distributed more to bigger market countries like the U.K. and the Netherlands?
When you buy sherry, now you’re doin’ things smart.
Drink that slop.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
Fairbanks and Taylor appears to be cheap California sherry-style wine marketed as “Sherry” in some variation or other.
From what I can tell, the real stuff from Spain isn’t marketed as just “sherry” anymore, it’s now marketed as “Fino”, “Oloroso”, “Manzanilla”, “Amontillado”, “Pedro Ximenez”, etc…
Have you considered looking for a substitute from across the Atlantic? Maybe the production problems are local to California?
It took me since this thread was started to realize what the subject was. I was reading the title, and assuming that “Sherry Wine” is some obscure beverage. But it’s just sherry, NOW I get it.
(It’s like if a thread was titled “I can’t find Scotch Spirits anywhere, what happened?”)
My actual contribution to this thread is the comment that there’s always been “Sherry not fit to drink”. Cite: tasting my mom’s cooking sherry as a kid.
And a speculation: I wonder if everyone who sipped sherry after dinner (in their smoking jackets and a monocle) has moved on to the excellent ports that are out there now.
And for what it’s worth, the liquor stores around here typically have a fairly wide selection, although since I only buy it for cooking, I haven’t bought any in a long time.
You can always order online and have it delivered.
Ports have always been de rigueur after dinner among the monocled class. Sherries – at least, dry sherry – are more of a before-dinner drink. Not sure where cream sherries fit in – maybe for the wimmin-folk.
Huh. I had thought “sherry” was an appellation like champagne, and only applied to the specific set of fortified wines made in that region. Obviously I am wrong.
We did a tasting tour in Spain. They were quite nice but they don’t age well and for something often best as a single small glass before a meal, it isn’t practical in my house.
Well, I happen to have a recently purchased cask of what I was told was very nice sherry that I’d be happy to have the OP sample so I can get his opinion of it. It’s stored right downstairs in a convenient niche in my wine cellar.
In Australia that is correct. Sherry and Port produced locally now goes by other names - Apera for sherry. Although some of them just trust to using the name and the style. So McWilliam’s Royal Reserve Dry Sherry, which is the standard cooking sherry just drops the word sherry. At least that’s the case for the bottle in my pantry.
Well, thanks to all for the input. I reached out to the company and of course heard nothing back.