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Veteran bartender Nate Brown describes it as his “secret ingredient”. Abbie Davies from the Vining Street Wine Club in Brixton, south London, says: “It adds a lot of flavour, salinity, umami and structure.” And Max Wolff at Nancy’s, in London Bridge, is of the opinion that “it can turn a good drink into a truly memorable one”. What exactly is this mysterious cocktail elixir? It is, of course, sherry.

Sherry, the great fortified wine of Andalusia, comes in many guises, from the bone-dry pale fino to the incredibly sweet pedro ximénez (PX), made from sun-dried grapes. In between these two poles there’s amontillado – a long-aged intensely nutty fino, dark pungent oloroso, and palo cortado that tastes like a cross between amontillado and oloroso. Finally there’s cream sherry which blends dry oloroso and PX. All of them play different roles behind the bar.

Davies combines two different kinds in her barrel-aged sherry negroni. It consists of bitters, vermouth, gin, fino and PX. She explains that the PX adds some sweetness while the fino adds a lick of salinity and the barrel ageing really rounds out the bitterness of the bitters, making for a well-balanced, more complex and sophisticated take on a classic negroni. Who could resist that?

It’s the depth of flavour that makes sherry so invaluable for bartenders. According to Tristan Stephenson, author and owner of the Surfside cafe in Polzeath, Cornwall, PX makes a great sugar syrup substitute. It works particularly well as the sweetening agent in a rum old fashioned where it brings a “rum and raisin” quality to the cocktail.

Sherry also has a natural affinity for whisky. No wonder – as much whisky, especially single malt scotch, is aged in oak barrels that once contained oloroso. The dried fruit flavour that you love in, some of the best aged whiskies is sherry, so adding a bit more is never a bad idea. According to Wolff: “There are not many drinks that couldn’t benefit from a splash of some kind of sherry.”

He recommends fino for brighter cocktails and especially to cut through the sweetness of fruity drinks. A splash of sherry will give your bloody mary a lift. Wherever you might use vermouth, as in a Manhattan or martini, you can use a dry style of sherry instead. Wolff makes a Nancy’s filthy martini with olive brine and oloroso.

Stephenson warns, however, that sherry can be so strongly flavoured that you might need to balance it out with a little vermouth or the sherry can take over. After much experimentation with a dry martini recipe, I found that three parts gin to one part palo cortado and a tablespoon of extra-dry vermouth works brilliantly.

In Britain, sherry is enjoying a bit of a moment, both on its own and in cocktails. Davies thinks that customers are taking to it in a way they did with vermouth. If you are going to combine sherry and vermouth, you are in luck because some of the best vermouth in the world comes from the sherry region, using high-quality local wine as its base. Great bodegas all make superlative vermouth. In fact, the combination of vermouth and sherry is such a potent one that you can leave the gin or whisky out altogether.

The Schofield brothers, the duo behind Schofield’s Bar in Manchester, one of the top 100 bars in the world, recommend a cocktail called the adonis in their brilliant book Schofield’s Fine and Classic Cocktails. Their recipe consists of one part dry oloroso stirred over ice with one part sweet vermouth; add a dash of bitters and serve straight up in a chilled nick & nora glass with a peel of orange. The result is something with all the flavour of a Manhattan but half the alcohol.

There’s a drier version known as the bamboo, which is a great thrown-together cocktail – no shaker required. Simply fill a tumbler with ice, add one part chilled fino and one part dry vermouth. Stir and serve with a lemon slice. It’s the perfect summer’s day cocktail. The other great hot weather sherry cocktail is the rebujito, which is essentially a spritz made with fino and lemonade and served with fresh lemon and mint. They drink a lot of it in southern Spain – there is no better drink when the temperature goes above 30C.

A new bar, FlipDog in London’s Old Street, opened by two Ukrainian bartenders and entrepreneurs Artem Skapenko and Alex Kostenyuk, leans heavily into sherry. The bar’s name comes from one of the great old-school cocktails, the sherry flip, which was traditionally made with sweet sherry, sugar and a whole egg, shaken hard together with ice so that the egg emulsifies. It requires strong biceps.

If that sounds a bit too much like hard work, do as they do in Jerez, the home of sherry. Drink a sherry sunset – a good cream sherry with lots of ice and a slice of orange. It’s sweet, rich and tangy all at the same time. In short, it’s an instant cocktail.

To discover how to make sherry cocktails yourself, visit here