One of our absolutely favourite pairings is oysters and a dry sherry. How could it not be? The salinity in the oysters and the Fino echoes between them and is the perfect thing to take in while by the sea. But the best time to have your oysters and sherry might not be what you think—perhaps you've heard the rule of thumb that oysters should be eaten only during months that contain an 'R' (sorry, May, June, July, and August). While this is somewhat outdated (we're looking at you, modern refrigeration and transport!), oysters harvested in the winter are still seen as the prize. The summer months may allow us to enjoy them outdoors in the sun, but winter months are peak season for oysters.
"Everyone associates oysters with summer, but oysters are better in the winter when the water's colder," says nature-inspired chef Hylton Espey. He's head chef at Rastella at Merchants Manor in Cornwall, and our go-to guy on local produce, seasonal food, seafood pairings, and, of course: oysters.
Since oysters reproduce during the summer months in the warmer water (in some places where the water is warm year-round, they reproduce year-round), they use up all their energy on making oyster babes and thus become a bit more flabby and less flavorful. Once the water temperatures drop and are less suitable for reproduction, they're resting and become leaner—getting back that special crisp, briny flavour every oyster-lover seeks and uses to compare origin points.
Half the fun of eating oysters might be debating oyster provenance, and Chef Hylton is all in on Cornwall. "Living on the south coast of Cornwall we have some of the best oysters that I have ever had. Last year we moored our sailboat in Ponsence Cove at the entrance to the Helford and foraged for natives, which we ate freshly-shucked, seasoned with sea water," but, obviously a true lover in all their forms, he adds "From the Fal to the Helford, Native or Pacific, North Coast or South Coast, they are all amazing and world class." We couldn't agree more.
You need something to match the brine and salinity that oysters bring to the table (and lips) and a Fino or Manzanilla sherry is largely considered one of the best wine pairings for oysters due to its kindred notes. The Palomino grape (which sherry is made from) and oysters sort of share a terroir (if we can call the sea a terroir): the Palomino grape is blasted by the gorgeous sea breeze in Andalucia and makes for the unique freshness found in dry styles of sherry. So we have to agree that a glass of ice-cold Fino sherry is the perfect pairing for oysters, or even one of our Tuxedo Martinis: the herbaceous gin and bitters are another layer of perfection.
Images from Hylton Espey, and Pixabay.
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The inaugural Vinexpo Shanghai launched on the 22nd October 2019 and XECO was in prime position on the Nimbility booth. While sherry is not yet a booming (nor indeed generally well-known) category in China it was really refreshing to see the positive reaction across the board to both our Fino and Monti.
Our new Importer Chengdu Fine West, who will be launching XECO into the Sichuan province in early 2020, came to visit and were really encouraged by the positive response and the great potential both as a wine and in Spritzes/cocktails.
XECO also hosted an after party in Bull & Claw for the trade and the XECO cocktails went down a storm! BUT the best part was catching a few people asking for their XECO straight up as the night wore on....
]]>On Monday 21st October, the prestigious Academie du Vin will officially launched the next book under their new publishing arm, this time on Sherry. Penned by non-other than XECO’s long-standing advisor and fortified wine legend, Ben Howkins, ‘Sherry: Maligned, Misunderstood, Magnificent’ covers the history of this wonderful wine (including the reasons for its fall from grace in the 90s), info on all the leading brands, and interviews with personalities from across the industry including XEQUITA Beanie.
Hot on the heels of the Spanish launch at the Consejo Regulador in Jerez, Spain, this event was hosted at London’s prestigious 67 Pall Mall club, where XECO was the welcome drink (served neat or in a spritz with Double Dutch Cucumber and Watermelon) as the great and good for the wine, publishing and journalism worlds came to toast this fab new book - and the long-awaited comeback of Sherry too of course.
]]>Big news! XECO has officially launched in Japan effective October 2019 as part of the growing SARMENT drinks portfolio.
SARMENT is Asia’s fastest growing luxury wine and spirits business providing 'art de la table' products and services to both private individuals and corporate enterprises active in the luxury community. They are Headquartered in Singapore and operating a team of extensively networked Sommeliers and Spirits Evangelists, they operate seamlessly across twelve countries internationally.
Having seen a growing global demand for sherry, we decided to spread our wings further into Asia, starting in Hong Kong and China, and now Japan!
Here is XEQUITA Polly at the fab Bar Salvador in Tokyo.
XECO has been chosen to take up a coveted space in ENOTRIA & COE’s growing Agency spirits portfolio, alongside their high-profile wines.
E&C is the UK’s leading wine and spirits supplier, focused on building strong partnerships with customers, producers and brands to produce results. Their reputation is built on three core and constant factors: obsessive product knowledge, the creation of strong partnerships, and a commitment to excellence in everything they do.
As a full-service wine and spirits company, E&C has the UK's most comprehensive, premium and inspired portfolio and has excellent nationwide distribution. We are thrilled to be included in the line-up… look out for us popping-up in a wine shop or bar near you!
]]>There may be any number of reasons why you are thinking about trying dry sherry. You have heard mutterings that sherry is the next big thing and are keen to get on board. Perhaps it’s time you reached for this new tipple before dinner rather than your ‘safe’ G&T. Your coolest friend hangs out at trendy hipster sherry bars and keeps remarking on the joys of a chilled Fino. You just tried it on holiday in southern Spain, as the Andalusian sun set, and you were sold; sold enough to decide that when you got home the fridge door was now to hold your new love. Or, simply, dry sherry is low calorie and that ‘summer body’ needs just a bit more help.
So, where to find it? This seems to be the root cause of the problem. People just don’t know where best to pick up a good dry sherry, and can be somewhat fearful at the prospect.
Fortunately, there are some excellent, well known retailers offering a strong selection. Waitrose’s own Fino sherry is a most quaffable option for the price. You can also find the notable names of Gonzalez Byass and Lustau. Their website tells you useful information such as the level of dryness on a numbered scale, giving uncomplicated vinicultural information and listing wine awards. Sainsbury’s also holds a comprehensive range of sherries along with their own ‘Winemaker’s Range’.
If you enjoy the personal touch of a small independent wine merchant you can discover many a well-stocked store. The classic and highly respected Berry Bros. & Rudd on St James’s Street is always worthy of a visit. Spirited Wines, Friarwood, Jeroboams and Bedales name but a few more. For the luxurious shopping experience, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Harrods or Hedonism are a must, with hands on help, guiding you through your dry sherry purchase.
If you would like to return home from work to find a case of 6 on the doorstep the well regarded and highly skilled team at Laithwaites is there to help. They offer full time customer service, a comprehensive range of dry sherry and a number of membership and delivery options. The Wine Society is another highly regarded retailer presenting an excellent portfolio, and Master of Malt both delivers across the UK and has an impressive international distribution network. Vino Beano is a relatively new wine club with rare and carefully chosen sherries.
These are all great for the home, but for an evening out dry sherry does seem to be a bit harder to come by, and is yet to find itself more regularly sitting amongst its counterparts on the aperitif section of the wine list.
Naturally, a Spanish tapas bar will provide by the glass options. The notable Camino Group just launched its new summer pop up terrace at their Bankside branch with delicious ‘Spanish serves’. The Iberico and Barrafina groups offer a well chosen sherry list as well as delicious food to accompany their selection. Jason Atherton’s Social Wine and Tapas is a sensational experience with a most impressive sherry list and food menu to savour.
The new and fabulous SACK near Liverpool Street is a welcome entry to the London bar scene. This trendy operation by Barry Scotch and Fabrice Limon is championing the category with an extensive offering by the glass.
If you want to drink dry sherry away from the Spanish restaurants you may find it more of a challenge but luxury hotel bars should offer a few by the glass, The Rosewood, The Connaught and The Ritz being just a few to mention.
Here we have identified a few places to find dry sherry. The list is not exhaustive by any means. It is also ever growing. And watch this space for spots to sip XECO!
XOXO,
Lex
One of the common misconceptions about sherry is that ALL sherry is sweet...This couldn’t be further from the truth but there is a very good reason why people—particularly in the UK—believe this, and that is because of a style of sherry popularly known as Cream sherry.
Image credit: Annie B. Spain / XECO Co-founder, Polly, pondering the mysteries of Sherry, on location in Jerez
To finish what I started, Cream sherry is a blend of a base Amontillado or Oloroso wine which has been topped-up with the sweet Pedro Ximenez. This can be done in varying percentages—look out for 'medium cream' which will be slightly less sweet.
This is a COMPLEX subject (and I am not going to discuss Pale Cream here, which is a slightly modified version of the above!) but the idea is to give a simple overview. If you want to learn more (especially the technical deets) I highly recommend visiting the official website of Sherry Wines, www.sherry.wine, which will give you more sherry wisdom than you ever knew you wanted to know and will certainly enrich your life.
Over and out,
PB x
XECO Amontillado Sherry |
XECO Fino Sherry |
Our co-Founder Beanie was invited to contribute to the latest edition of the Good Pub Guide. Read the full, unabridged version of the article below!
“If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack”, so concludes Falstaff after a lengthy monologue on the subject of sherry otherwise known as “sack” in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 2. The UK’s love-affair with sherry is long-standing and deep rooted - Shakespeare is just one of countless British personalities who refer to it in their writing with great affection – so why is it that it has fallen from favour in recent years and is it true that a comeback is finally just around the corner?
Beginning at the beginning, there are records dating as far back as the 12th Century of shipments of wine to the British Isles from ‘Sherish’ the Moorish name for the town of Jerez de la Frontera, in the heart of the Sherry Triangle. However, it was almost one hundred years later that the trade began in earnest, when the Spanish King Alfonso X – having reclaimed the city from the Moors - entered into a bartering agreement with the English King Henry I to each promote their national produce: English wool for Spanish sherry wine. Imports took off and the Jerez vineyards became such an important source of wealth for the Spanish kingdom that a Royal Decree in 1402 prohibited the uprooting of even a single vine.
The export of sherry gave rise to some of the leading characteristics of this style of wine, notably fortification with grape spirit to prevent spoiling during sea voyages and later the unique ageing method known as the Solera System which ensured a product which was consistent in quality and flavour year after year. Before long, sherry had become so popular in the UK that – as with Port – British companies were setting up home in the region to oversee production, and in 1796 an importer by the name of Harveys was established, before going on to blend and launch one of the enduring sherry brands in the UK market: Harveys Bristol Cream.
To this day, sweeter styles of sherry – such as the chestnut-hued Harveys Bristol Cream or pale cream Croft Original – account for 85% of sherry consumption in the British Isles, but the consumption levels of this style of sherry as a whole are dwindling as younger consumers turn-away from sweeter drinks in favour of crisper, fresher alternatives – nowhere seen more clearly than in the stratospheric re-birth of Gin. Spain is in fact Europe’s leading market for Gin – their elaborate ‘gintonic’ culture is an inspiration – but Spain has also now succeeded the UK as the largest single market for sherry and it’s on the rise. The reason? 85% of sherry consumed in Spain is dry – bone-dry Finos and Manzanillas.
Fino sherry – like its cousin Manzanilla – has all the hallmarks of a contemporary classic here in the UK too. A food-loving, appetite-whetting wine, it pairs brilliantly with classic bar snacks such as nuts, olives and charcuterie, as well as heartier staples such as fish and chips and risotto. Naturally low in residual sugars (comparable to champagne), which appeals to the growing body of health conscious consumers, it is also far lower in alcohol than most consumers think at 15% ABV.
Steve Carter’s article in last year’s Good Pub Guide addressed the question of the UK’s changing relationship with alcohol with an increasing number of consumers looking for low or no-alcohol options. As a fortified wine which is more robust than most white table wines, sherry in general and Fino in particular can offer up their services to a large number of fun and more elaborate low-alcohol spritz options – soda, tonic, lemonade and ginger ale all work brilliantly with Fino and look delicious when properly garnished.
XECO Wines, which launched in September 2017, is on a mission to re-energise the sherry category precisely by putting a contemporary edge on this age-old wine, promoting its use in spritz and other low-alcohol cocktails and in doing so helping to dispel some of the myths that “sherry is for nan, not for me”. It is still early days, but the tide is definitely turning as more and more younger consumers wise-up to the richness of sherry, its history and pedigree but most of all its versatility.
XECO serves worth giving a spin –
XECO GINGER
· 75ml XECO Fino
· 75ml Schweppes Ginger Ale
· 2 dashes of peach bitters
Combine together in a rocks glass, over ice, and garnish with a lemon twist.
XECO COBBLER
· 50ml XECO Amontillado
· 25ml lime juice
· 15ml sugar syrup
· Summer fruits and herbs
Muddle fruits and herbs together in the bottom of a highball glass, add other ingredients and churn with ice. Garnish with lots of fruit an optional dash of soda.
2013 is notable in history for being the year that Japan won the bid to host the 2020 Olympic games, the legendary Nelson Mandela passed away at at the ripe old age of 95, Yahoo bought Tumblr for a cool 1.1 billion dollars and on the tiny but mighty island of Hong Kong the XECO trio first met.
While these merry friendships were blooming in the hallowed streets of Lan Kwai Fong (and a few more salubrious places too) I confessed to the others to being a total Hispanophile and in particular extremely passionate about the wines of Jerez. Alexa and Polly were working in the wine industry at the time and both agreed that these beautiful wines were wholly underappreciated.
In an attempt to educate our friends who all said sherry was not for them, we hosted a 5-Course sherry pairing 'farewell' dinner, shortly before Alexa and I both returned to London for good. It was a resounding success with over 80% of the attendees arriving with a negative perception of these jewels of Andalucia and leaving as converts. Afterwards, as we sat about polishing off the bottles, we came up with the genesis of the idea which would later become XECO.
Fast forward to early 2016 and the vision 'Let's make sherry cool again' started to take shape, under the codename 'Project Seco'.
As we researched how this product should take shape, it became apparent that there were 3 main barriers to people's perception of sherry:
1) It is something granny drinks, and not for me: i.e. the brand needed to relevant and contemporary
2) Sherry is only drunk at Christmas or poured into trifle: i.e. we needed to focus on the crisp and refreshing dry style Fino since it is perfect for Spring/Summer and can be drunk straight or with a mixer… “Fin’tonic, anyone?”
3) Sherry is too sweet: i.e. it was critical to highlight a little known fact: both the driest and sweetest wines in the world are sherries, hence we chose a name that emphasizes the dry styles – XECO is a derivation of ‘seco’ which means dry in Spanish.
As we searched for inspiration and ideas to develop the brand we kept uncovering little snippets and stories about the history of sherry throughout the ages and how it played such a big part in defining the relations between Spain and the UK. The Great British Barter became our starting point, with the characters of Alfonso X and Henry I who initiated a trade of Spanish wine for English wool.
Since those early days, a host of incredibly famous people such as Will Shakespeare and his Spanish counterpart Miguel de Cervantes have talked or written about their love of the great sherry wines, and before long we had inadvertently drawn up a cast of characters through the ages who were all connected to sherry/Jerez. With a little help from an amazing design agency and a talented artist on the Norfolk coast our characters came to life.
By mirroring an English character with a Spanish one, we hold on to the essence of the original barter and we hope to extend this thread in time and bring our cast of characters up to date… bespoke commissions in future perhaps?
The hero of our new brand is XECO Fino. An incredibly crisp, refreshing, elegant wine this also has the naturally-occurring advantage of being incredibly low in calories as there is virtually no residual sugar (see Dry vs. Cream sherry). Mix XECO Fino with a slimline tonic or your favourite lemonade, and you’ve got a delicious long-drink that is has the same ABV as a beer and is an awesome Summer sip! (None of this, ‘sherry is just for Christmas’ nonsense).
We also have an outstanding XECO AMONTILLADO (‘Monti’) that will be launching later in the year, and a lovely option as those cooler Autumn days draw in; drink it chilled or pour a generous measure into a Negroni for a delicious twist.
So, XECO is essentially all about breathing new life into an amazing and storied world of sherry; encouraging the trade to hero sherry wine as they would a spirit, and giving a new generation of consumers a brand of sherry that they can identify and have fun with.
#GiveMeAXeco
Besos,
BE x