Oloroso sherry from Spain

A FORTIFIED wine this week - sherry at a bargain price. It's dark brown in colour with a raisiny bouquet. There's a nutty taste of almonds and dried fruit.

This is a rich dry sherry, two on the sweetness scale. At 18 per cent alcohol it's full-bodied with a long finish. They've used a natural cork closure with an easy-to-read label.

Sherry comes from the region of Southern Spain around Jerez de la Frontera and has its own DO - Jerez-Xeres-Sherry (the town in three languages). The climate here is influenced by sea breezes from the gulf of Cadiz. Temperatures inland reach 40 degrees C and the rain nearly all falls during November to May, so it's sunshine for 294 days a year. The soil here has a 60 per cent chalk content, which is thought to have a lot to do with the taste of the wine.

This wine comes from a small independent bodega, Sanchez Romate, which supplies sherry for the Tesco Finest range using the best palomino grapes. Oloroso means fragrant and it's the sherry with the most bouquet and pronounced taste.

Three months after fermentation, classification into fino or oloroso is carried out: the fino is fortified to 15 degrees alcohol to encourage flor (a fungus that feeds on the glycerol in the wine) and the oloroso is fortified to over 16 per cent, which inhibits the flor. The oloroso is then allowed a little oxidation before entering its own solera, a system for maintaining the consistency of the sherry over the years. Sherry is not given an age as the solera is topped up with the current year's wine and some drawn off containing different years.

This is an aperitif wine to serve at room temperature or lightly chilled with cheese or ham tapas. It is £4.99 in Tesco.

21/02/06