Sherry no filter

Sherry no filter – the joy and flavour of En Rama

The world can seem so afraid of flavour sometimes, can’t it?

Afraid that such and such will be ‘too much’ for the consumer. That something has too much character, too much intensity, will turn drinkers off.

And so we find flavour dialled back accordingly. Lower spice, heightened sugar, tighter filters.

You see it in every category of drinks from beer to spirits to bulk wine. Measures taken, whether out of efficiency or out of this anxiety that the consumer’s palate will accept only the lowest common denominator. All of them resulting in a drink with less to say for itself.

En Rama Sherry doesn’t do that.

The totality of sherry’s flavour

En Rama Sherry stands almost as a riposte to the reduction of flavour in drinks.

First produced by our great friends at Barbadillo in 1999, it was revolutionary – and brave.

Sherry, particularly the lightest styles of Fino and Manzanilla, had itself been on something of a journey over the thirty years preceding.

Believing the consumer to prefer only the palest wines, bodegas had reduced the age and increased the filtration of their Manzanilla and Fino. Lighter wines, sure … but flavour was laid on the altar in the process.

The idea of En Rama was to present sherry as you’d taste it at the bodega, directly from cask. Darker, richer and utterly bristling with that inimitable wild, vibrant, saline character found nowhere else in the world.

The true taste of Manzanilla; full-throttle, unmuted.

A living drink, captured

What’s more, that sensitive handling of the wine not only allows more character, but more detail.

Each individual category of sherry can often be thought of – certainly by most consumers – as something of a flavour monolith. ‘This producer’s Oloroso’. ‘That producer’s Fino.’ Differences within style largely ascribed to the age and complexity of any given solera.

What En Rama allows is for smaller nuances of each wine to be captured, shielded as they are from the grip of the hard filter.

For instance, they can reveal that the solera itself is a living, breathing entity; not something preserved in aspic, but impacted by the turn of the seasons.

In winter, the ‘flor’, that all-important layer of yeast cells that allows biological ageing to take place becomes dormant and thins, whilst in summer, the impact of heat creates the same thinning effect for different reasons. Meanwhile in Spring and Autumn, conditions are perfect for a thicker, more robust layer of flor.

In Sanlúcar, where Barbadillo make their Manzanilla, annual conditions are more consistent than in Jerez, meaning the flor remains healthier all year round, and the bright, saline characters remain more consistent.

It is only through En Rama that the micro-differences in the seasonal cycle of flor fully reveal themselves; beautifully captured in Barbadillo’s seasonally-released bottlings – the Estacional Manzanilla Pasadas En Rama. Wines that celebrate nuance as much as intensity.

A celebration of sherry flavour

As we reach the end of Sherry Week, it seems only right to celebrate its fullest expression.

Sherry is so idiosyncratic, so historic, so utterly itself that it deserves to be celebrated for everything it is.

A vibrant, complex, living drink that nothing made anywhere else in the world comes close to in terms of flavour. Why would you want to hide any of that?

Cheers to sherry, cheers to En Rama, and cheers to the pioneers at Barbadillo who imagined a more flavoursome world.