From cask to copa
I first fell for Tío Pepe during a stay in the port city of Cádiz, just down the road from the sherry town of Jerez. Nothing else seemed to go so well with a bowl of salted almonds, briny olives or grilled prawns, or even just watching the Atlantic breakers roll in. Tío Pepe is the world's most famous fino sherry; it has been on the market since 1844, and is sometimes maligned for its ubiquity. But the truth is that it is a product of impeccable quality, a classic, polished fino: bone dry and saline, with notes of citrus, breadcrumb and chamomile.
For a long time, though, sherry aficionados have known that however good a glass of Tío Pepe from the bottle may be, it doesn't have the raw intensity, the sheer depth of flavour, as a glass drawn directly from the cask. And so was born the concept of the En Rama ('raw') sherry, a bottling that captures that cask-fresh intensity: a selection of some of the best casks in one of the coolest rooms in Gonzalez Byass's sprawling 19th century bodega are bottled (crucially) with the very minimum of clarification and filtration. The result is a super-charged glass of Tío Pepe: vibrant, intensely fresh, revealing layers of flavour not normally apparent.
Gonzalez Byass first released a Tío Pepe En Rama as an experiment in 2010; it was such a success that it has been repeated every year since, always in spring when the flor (the yeast which grows in a film on the surface of the sherry, and gives it its distinctive taste) is at its most vigorous. The bodega used to advise drinking it in its first three months, to capture it in its freshest state. These days they have added the coda that it is worth losing the last bottle for a while, as it has also shown it can evolve towards a very gastronomic, nuttier style. /NT
Offered subject to remaining unsold; available now
