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If you thought sherry was simply a fortified wine rolled out at Christmas, you would be mistaken on many levels. Sherry – is actually a place. The word comes from the English inability to pronounce Jerez, so they came up with something closer to the Arab name for the city, Sherish.

Merchants from Britain have been coming to southern Spain for a long time now – for more than 500 years. And the reason? For the wine, naturally. The chalky soils produced a wine that was at once powerful and refreshing. Most importantly, at a time when many wines would turn to vinegar soon after harvest, sherry was strong and stable, to coin a phrase. It lasted on the voyage from the port of Cádiz, which could take up to a month to reach London or Bristol.

You can gauge just how popular sherry was by looking at the culture of Tudor England. In the plays of Shakespeare, German wines, bordeaux and madeira get brief mentions but “sack” – what the Elizabethans called the wine from Jerez – is mentioned dozens of times. It’s almost as if Shakespeare was in the pay of “big sherry”. In Henry IV Part Two, Sir John Falstaff praises “sherry-sack” for giving him “excellent wit”. Just how I always feel after a glass of fino.

Despite many ups and downs, not least Sir Francis Drake sailing into Cádiz harbour and stealing some 3,000 barrels of sherry in 1587, there has been a British presence in the town of Jerez continuously since the 16th century. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, the very same duke who commanded the Spanish Armada, was ironically something of an Anglophile.

You can still see the British presence today in the names of the great sherry companies, such as Harveys, Osborne, with its giant bulls dotted around the Spanish countryside, or González Byass – a collaboration between a Spanish and an English family.

Sherry was one of the most prestigious wines in Victorian Britain. Dickens was a great fan and used to order a special amontillado, a dry rich style, which he referred to as “nutty, full flavoured, unbrandied amontillado sherry, the golden juice I have so often held up to the light with ridiculous affectation of knowingness”.

The Wine Society catalogue from 1880 lists fine old solera sherry for 62 shillings a dozen, that’s more than the top wine from Bordeaux, which was only 56 shillings. Wine connoisseurs then would have known the great vineyards of Jerez. While the drier styles of sherry were highly regarded, sweeter styles were also very popular. Wines such as amoroso and Indian sherry were raisiny and sweet – perfect for keeping the cold of foggy London town out. In the mid-19th century, roughly 40% of the wine drunk in Britain was sherry.

Sherry was so popular that it was copied all over the world. Imitation wines were made in South Africa, Australia and California, but none could hold a candle to the real thing, because sherry requires a specific terroir and the traditional bodega environment. It is a combination of the classic grapes of the region, palomino, pedro ximénez and moscatel, the famed albariza (chalky soils), the natural yeasts that lurk in the cool vast high-ceilinged wineries.

In Britain in the 1930s it became fashionable to host sherry parties in the early evening: have some friends over, put out some snacks, and open a few bottles of chilled fino. What could be easier? And things haven’t changed much since then. When people couldn’t travel during Covid, sherry sales soared as they reached for the fino and olives.

There’s far more to sherry than fino with tapas or a sweeter style at Christmas, however. Of course, there are few things better than oysters with a chilled glass of fino – the driest kind of sherry. But exactly the same wine works brilliantly with fish and chips on a rainy evening in Leeds. In her beginner’s guide to wine, The 24-Hour Wine Expert, Jancis Robinson suggests fino as a perfect substitute for white burgundy – just make sure you serve it in a proper wine glass rather than a tiny schooner so you can appreciate the full aroma.

The Japanese in particular love sherry’s umami, a taste that chimes perfectly with their cuisine. And a recent revelation for me was tasting slow-cooked Middle Eastern lamb with an oloroso, a darker style of dry sherry with a salty, almost earthy taste. Meanwhile, 2022’s MasterChef champion of champions Ping Coombes, swears by oloroso with Chinese duck.

That’s the magical thing about Jerez. It produces something for all palates and occasions, from the driest, crispest fino to the sweetest pedro ximénez. No wonder sherry has been such a favourite in Britain for more than 500 years.

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