Fino Sherry

Fino is the palest, driest and most delicate style of Sherry — a bone-dry fortified white from Jerez in Andalusia, southwestern Spain, made from the neutral Palomino grape. It is fortified only to about 15 percent alcohol and then aged biologically beneath a living veil of flor yeast that seals the wine from the air, so it grows savoury and yeasty rather than oxidised. The result is bracingly dry and light-bodied, tasting of green almond, bruised green apple, fresh bread dough and a briny, sea-air tang, with a clean, almond-bitter finish and no perceptible sweetness at all. It is a non-vintage wine, blended across many years in a solera of stacked casks and bottled young, because its charm depends on the fragile flor. Poured cold in a small copita, it is the archetypal Andalusian aperitif and one of the great matches for salted almonds, olives, jamón, anchovies and fried fish.