Sherry styles explained: fino to Pedro Ximénez, the glass and the food

Sherry is the wine of the Jerez-Xérès-Sherry designation of origin. Its specification draws the vineyards from ten municipalities around Jerez de la Frontera, and the Consejo Regulador, which governs the designation, calls Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Jerez and El Puerto de Santa María the sherry triangle.

In Britain, Defra’s register of protected names lists Jerez-Xérès-Sherry as a wine with a protected designation of origin, registered in the UK scheme on 10 March 2021 and with the EU on 13 June 1986. The same register protects amontillado, oloroso and palo cortado as traditional terms.

Sherry is not a spirit. Most of it is a liqueur wine, which retained Regulation (EU) 1308/2013 defines as wine or grape must with alcohol of vine origin added, at 15 to 22% ABV. The current specification also allows the dry styles as plain wine, with no alcohol added, where they reach their strength another way. Vermouth, flavoured rather than fortified, is in vermouth explained, and what is a liqueur explains why neither wine is a liqueur.

The specification permits six grapes: Palomino, Pedro Ximénez, Moscatel de Alejandría, Beba, Perruno and Vigiriega. The Consejo’s viticulture notes call Palomino the region’s undisputed leader, and Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel make the sweet wines.

After fermentation the cellar’s tasters classify each new wine, as the Consejo Regulador describes it. The palest and finest get a single stroke and go to 15%, a strength at which flor can grow. Fuller wines are marked with a circle and taken to at least 17%, where not even flor yeast survives.

Flor is a skin of yeast growing across the wine in a butt left with two fists of air at the top. According to the Consejo, it keeps oxygen off the wine, feeds on its alcohol and glycerine, and raises the acetaldehyde behind the sharp nose of fino and manzanilla. This is biological ageing.

Without flor, air reaches the wine. The Consejo’s ageing notes record that it darkens year by year, and that water escaping through the oak, 3 to 5% a year, concentrates what remains. That oxidative ageing makes oloroso, which never sees flor. Amontillado and palo cortado take both routes: flor first, then air.

Most sherry ages in a criaderas and solera system, set out on the Consejo’s ageing page. The oldest butts sit at floor level and are the solera, from suelo, floor. Wine for bottling is drawn from them, and the gap is refilled from the next tier up, the first criadera, which is refilled from the second, up to the youngest wine.

The blend evens out the harvests, which is why most sherry carries no vintage. The specification sets an average age of at least two years, worked out as the volume in the system divided by the volume drawn off for sale in a year. It also allows añada ageing, one harvest kept apart, so a vintage sherry can exist.

The figures below are from the Jerez specification and the manzanilla specification, both as amended in May 2026, and the colours are from the Consejo Regulador’s style pages. Some of those pages still give older figures, so a back label may differ.

Fino and manzanilla differ by town. The manzanilla specification requires every year of ageing in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and the Jerez one lets fino age anywhere in the zone except Sanlúcar. The Consejo’s manzanilla page credits the town’s milder, damper air with a flor of its own.

The sweet bottles are of two kinds. Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel are naturally sweet: the Consejo describes grapes dried in the sun and a fermentation stopped with wine alcohol. Pale cream, medium and cream are dry wines sweetened by blending, under the specification, and cream is oloroso with Pedro Ximénez. The specification lets a medium call itself medium dry below 50g a litre and medium sweet from 50g.

The small glass sold as a sherry glass is the copita, as the Consejo Regulador names it: a little stemmed tulip whose rim curves in so the aroma collects above the wine. Sizes, and how to measure yours, are on the sherry glass page.

The Consejo Regulador does not recommend it. Its serving advice says the small copita does not let the wine fully express itself, and names two alternatives: the traditional tasting glass, if it is large enough, and a good white wine glass, roomy in the bowl and long in the stem, its choice at the table. In Jerez the tasting glass is the catavino, the one the venenciador pours into from a height.

Britain had its own names. Wikipedia’s article on the schooner, a secondary source that marks the claim as unreferenced, records the clipper and the larger schooner as the two traditional British sherry measures, named after ships of the trade.

Neither appears in the measures law. Article 5A of the Weights and Measures (Intoxicating Liquor) Order 1988, as substituted in 2011, lets wine by the glass be sold only in 125ml or 175ml or multiples, and wine fortified for distillation in 50ml or 70ml or multiples, with the quantities stated in writing. The trade press, Harpers and The Drinks Business, both secondary, reported that as the rule for sherry and port, with the multiples keeping the old 100ml pour. The same 2011 change added two-thirds of a pint for beer and cider, the glass drinkers now call a schooner.

At home, pour a small measure into a white wine glass. The glassware guide covers the rest of the shelf.

The Consejo’s serving temperatures are 5 to 7°C for fino and manzanilla; 7 to 9°C for pale cream; 12 to 14°C for amontillado, oloroso, palo cortado, the blends and the rest of the air-aged wines; and about 15°C for VOS and VORS, wines certified as over 20 and over 30 years old under the specification. Its fino page gives 6 to 8°C, and an ice bucket to hold it there.

The same serving page says sherry does not improve once bottled. Store it upright, somewhere dark and at a steady temperature. Once it is open, put the cork back, and keep fino and manzanilla in the fridge.

Its guideline for an open bottle, tightly corked in the fridge, is up to a week for fino and manzanilla, up to two months for the other styles and three months for VOS and VORS. For a closed bottle the Consejo gives fino and manzanilla up to a year and the others up to three years.

The Consejo Regulador’s pairings put fino with olives, nuts, cured ham, fish, shellfish and gazpacho, and manzanilla with fish, seafood, salted fish and cured meats. Amontillado takes soups and consommés, white meat, tuna, wild mushrooms, asparagus and artichokes.

Oloroso is its choice for red meat, game and stews, and palo cortado for nuts, cured cheese and slow-cooked meat. Of the sweet styles, cream suits fruit, pastries and blue cheese, and over ice with a slice of orange it becomes an aperitif. Pedro Ximénez goes with dark chocolate, ice cream and strong blue cheeses such as Cabrales or Roquefort. Christmas drinks brings several to one table.

The Sherry Cobbler is the nineteenth-century classic. Wikipedia’s account, a secondary source, finds its earliest mention in an 1838 diary, its fame in Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit and a recipe in Jerry Thomas’s guide of 1862. The IBA’s version shakes 45ml of amontillado and 45ml of palo cortado with a teaspoon of sugar and citrus wheels and strains it over crushed ice, and ours follows it.

Fino carries the drinks with no spirit at all. The Bamboo stirs 45ml with 45ml of dry vermouth and bitters, the East India No. 2 does the same with orange bitters alone, and the Coronation No. 1 adds 5ml of maraschino. The Adonis takes 30ml of sweet vermouth to 45ml of fino.

With a spirit, fino becomes a modifier: 30ml under 60ml of gin in the Sherry Martini, 15ml in the London Calling and 7.5ml in the Banana Calling. In the Fog Cutter, 15ml of amontillado floats on top. Every fino drink wants a bottle opened within the past few days.

Port and Madeira are the other fortified wines on our pages. Port makes the Porto Flip, tawny shaken with brandy and egg yolk to the IBA’s measures, and Madeira has a page of its own.

Strength, sugar, grapes and ageing are from the two specifications of May 2026, published by the Consejo Regulador, and temperatures, keeping and pairings from its pages. The legal class is Regulation (EU) 1308/2013, the protection Defra’s register, the measures the Weights and Measures Order 1988. Histories are Wikipedia’s and the trade press’s, and recipes the IBA’s, each linked where used.