A Sweeter Sherry
An overview of Cream Sherry and friends
Cream, but without cream
For our last stop in the world of Sherry, we’ll be adding a little sweetness to the mix. Cream Sherry, along with Medium and Pale Cream, are sweetened versions of the dry styles we’ve discussed so far. I’m not quite sure how these styles came to be called “Cream” as there is no cream involved, just wine, spirit, and sugar. Maybe at some point they were used to sweeten milk. If you do know the origin of the name, feel free to send me a note!
To start our discussion, let’s look at the lightest style, Pale Cream. This is a biologically aged wine, so Fino or Manzanilla, which has been sweetened. Most often the sweetener here is RCGM, or rectified clarified grape must, a flavorless, colorless grape-derived sweetener. The RCGM sweetens the wine without masking any of the more delicate flavors from biological aging or changing the wine’s lemony color. There are exceptions, but Pale Cream Sherry is often not made from the highest quality wines, likely from earlier criadera rather than the solera. This means the wines tend to be less intense without the more complex aromas one might find in a dry Fino.
Medium and Cream Sherry are both made from sweetening a wine with some oxidative aging, like our Oloroso friend from last week or the lighter Amontillado. Though RCGM may be used for cheaper bottlings, more often these wines are sweetened by blending with a base Sherry such as PX (Pedro Ximinez). This not only sweetens the wine, but contributes further complex flavors and color from the PX Sherry . There are some notable differences between Cream and Medium. Namely, the level of sweetness for Medium Sherry can range from just off-dry to fairly sweet whereas a Cream Sherry will almost always pack a lot of sugar. Additionally, a Medium Sherry will be a blend of both biological and oxidative style Sherry whereas a Cream will be only oxidative. At least in the US, Cream tends to be more commonly available of the three styles discussed above.
Tasting time
With that said, we’ll taste Hartley & Gibson’s Cream Sherry for this issue. Admittedly, I wasn’t able to find much information on this producer. As an anecdote at least, their wines are quite common in at least Northern California from large retailers like Bevmo to smaller specialty shops. Let’s see how this wine is tasting.
Starting first with the color, the wine is distinctly brown with some clarity at the edge in the glass. This shouldn’t be surprising given we know Cream Sherry is made from Oloroso as the base dry wine and has PX Sherry blended in. As I was pouring the wine, it did have a noticeable viscosity, close to a very thin syrup, hinting at higher sugar content (again expected for the style). As opposed to the prior Sherry we’ve tasted, the aromatics didn’t jump out of the glass at me. Leaning in a bit though, I found the familiar oxidized Sherry aromas: candied walnuts, orange peel, and a distinct gingery note.
From the first taste, the wine was quite sweet with a prevalent burn from the alcohol. In addition to the aromatics, I also tasted a faint black tea flavor which I commonly taste in PX Sherry. The flavors didn’t quite hang around as long as I’d like and after several seconds had faded to leave a sweet, sugary taste. All in all I did enjoy the wine, though for me the alcohol and sugar were a bit overpowering with respect to the aromatics, something you might see more of in a premium Cream Sherry. For the $20 I paid for this wine, I would still put it at a good buy to have for desert or with vanilla ice cream. By the way, that latter one is especially good. Seriously, try it.
Wrapping up
This wraps up our time in Jerez and discussion of Sherry, at least for now. Hopefully you enjoyed hearing what to expect from these wines and why their maturation process, the solera system, makes them special. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to give Sherry a try the next time you’re at your local wine shop or see one on a restaurant menu to experience these wines for yourself!
Up next we’re heading to neighboring Portugal to visit the Douro Valley near Porto, home of Port. Well, actually, Vila Nova de Gaia is the historical home of Port, but we’ll get to that. In case you’ve run into it before, Port isn’t just the sweet red stuff you may have had in a chocolate desert. Like Sherry, these wines come in a wide range of styles with varying production techniques to make them what they are.
Further reading
As I mentioned, I purchased this wine for around $20 from a local wine shop, The Jug Shop. You can likely find a Cream Sherry on a shelf in your local wine shop as well, at least in the US. As before, if you can’t find it locally many online retailers like Wine.com can help you out with this or another Cream Sherry.
Until next time, cheers!