Marketing sherry is a real 'three pipe conundrum'. It benefits from strong name recognition in that almost everyone has heard of sherry. The challenge is that the drink that 90 per cent of people recognise as sherry – creamy sherry – doesn't taste much like the sort of wines that are drunk in Andalusia like finos, manzanillas, and dry olorosos.
One option is to forget all about what they do in Jerez and lean into the older demographic. This is something the El Consejo Regulador, the sherry regulatory and promotional body, did amusingly last year with the "Grandma Was Right" campaign. I’d love to see a follow-up featuring a vicar. Victoria Moore, the Daily Telegraph wine columnist, thought that if cream sherry was re-labeled 'Mince Pie Wine' it would fly off the shelves, I imagine, only at Christmas, but at least the distinction would be made.
This leaves the question of how to market all these dry sherries that people in the wine trade love but are less easy to sell to the general public.
Putting gastronomy centre-stage in the marketing of sherry. Jennifer Middleton and Ravinder Bhogal (l-r)
For the last 20 years, the marketing from the Consejo has explained what a brilliant food wine sherry is. As Consejo president, César Saldaña put it over a lunch at Quo Vadis last year, the aim is to "put gastronomy at the centre of what we do." The Consejo runs an annual competition called the Copa Jerez where chefs from around the world create dishes to go with sherry.
But the trade and press in Britain, despite largely being pro-sherry, still associate the wine with olives, almonds and gambas a la plancha. Whilst personally I can never get bored of those things with a nice glass of chilled manzanilla, there's only so many times you can write that article. So to demonstrate the versatility of sherry (and presumably give us poor hacks a different angle to cover) the Consejo's dynamic PR lady Jennifer Middleton is looking further afield for inspiration.
The inaugural Supper Club at Jikoni, June 16, 2025
She is planning to do a series of supper clubs around London highlighting the versatility of sherry. I attended the inaugural event at Jikoni just off Marylebone High Street. This is Ravinder Bhogal's restaurant which combines flavours of India with influences from all over the world. She's also a sherry fan, having visited Jerez and fallen in love with the wines.
The event took place on a sweltering June evening, perfect chilled manzanilla weather. In addition to Bhogal herself and some of the Consejo team, there was top chef José Pizarro, producer extraordinaire Melanie Jappy, food and wine-matching expert Fiona Beckett, and the cream of Southern England's vibrant influencer community. According to the region's publicity director Carmen Aumesquet Rodríguez, the idea was to drink sherry as they do in the south of Spain, with a meal.
That menu in full
So how well did it work?
I have to say, I had my doubts. Received opinion states that you need sweetness and acidity with spicy food. Whilst the food isn't strictly Indian, it's definitely very different to the sort of thing usually served with sherry.
We began with a snack that combined flavours of the Subcontinent with Italy and Spain: a carrot, fennel and goat's curd dip on a carta di musica (very thin Sardinian flatbread) with toasted flaked almonds. This is the kind of crunchy spicy snack that dry sherry is custom-built for, and the Lustau Fino en Rama did the job admirably, especially as we were still recovering from the outside heat.
Next up was a favourite of mine: Hidalgo La Gitana Pastrana, a richer long-aged style of manzanilla which we drank alongside scorched peaches, whipped tofu and lime leaf gremolata with peanut brittle. Overall, the food was probably too sweet for a wine like this, at least for my palate, but it wasn't overwhelmed and coped admirably with the herbal nature of the dish.
Artichoke, with its bitter flavour, is classically one of the hardest dishes to find a wine to go with, but having it deep-fried definitely played to sherry's strengths. There's really nothing better with deep-fried food: fino and fish and chips, yes please. We were served Amontillado from Gutiérrez Colosía which handled the artichoke and the accompanying spicy mayonnaise very well, though, I actually think the Pastrana would have worked even better.
Now on to the meat. At a recent dinner at Quo Vadis I thought the hardest thing to do with sherry is lamb because all you want is a nice Rioja. But actually the dry oloroso, also from Gutiérrez Colosía, was the perfect seasoning to a pressed shoulder of lamb with North African spicing where the fat has all been rendered off. It acted rather like gravy to the shredded meat. Mmm, sherry gravy.
Finally, the pudding combination seemed to really hit the spot for most of the room: a Solera East India from Lustau with banana cake, miso butterscotch, peanut brittle and, with a witty nod to ‘granny sherry’, Ovaltine kulfi. Melanie Jappy described it as "really successful", especially when "I put a bit of the sherry in the sauce and that really made it sing." There does seem to be some magical symbiosis between sweet sherry and banana.
Resounding success... with more to come
Overall, it was a fascinating evening with plenty of hits and revelations. The sherry wasn't overwhelmed by the strongly flavoured food and some combinations, oloroso with pressed lamb for example, were pretty much perfect.
There are more dinners planned including one with Ben Lippett from MOB Kitchen which sound fun. I think his bish-bash-bosh big flavours should suit some suitably robust sherries. The aim is to make people rethink sherry and, judging by the turnout, it's certainly got the attention of the British wine world, now to translate that into sales.
