Sherry, a fortified wine from Andalusia, can take a bit of getting used to if you normally drink fruity wines like sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio. Sherry is not primarily about fruit. Instead there’s flavours of nuts, bread and savoury yeasty notes.

Once you bring food into the equation, however, sherry makes perfect sense. The crispest, freshest styles are fino and manzanilla. They go particularly well with things like olives, prawns and, you might be surprised to hear, fish and chips.

Richer, darker, dry sherries like amontillados, olorosos and palo cortados go brilliantly with hard cheeses like manchego and cured meats like jamon serrano. While cream sherries or sweet olorosos are superb with a slice of seed cake or blue cheeses. Finally, there’s no better pudding than a glass of super sweet PX served alongside vanilla ice cream.

Sherry also makes an excellent aperitif, after-dinner sipper and cocktail ingredient. I’d highly recommend a bamboo – fino mixed half and half with vermouth and served straight up like a martini. Whatever the style, sherry is worth getting a taste for as it offers some of the best quality to price ratio in the wine world.

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Best sherry to buy at a glance

  • Best sherry for a sweet yet balanced sip: Gonzalez-Byass Cristina, £17.99
  • Best sherry for seafood pairings: Barbadillo Solear Manzanilla, £12.99
  • Best sherry for bold, savoury sips: Williams & Humbert 12 Year Old Amontillado, £24.99
  • Best sherry for rare, complex flavour: Morrisons Palo Cortado, £7
  • Best refreshing sherry: Hidalgo PX Triana, £19.99
  • Best nutty sherry: Morrisons The Best Oloroso sherry, £6.50
  • Best dry sherry: Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana manzanilla sherry, £7.99
  • Best PX Sherry: Best Gonzalez Byass Matusalem oloroso sherry, £25.49
  • Best sweet sherry: El Maestro Sierra PX sherry, £22
  • Best aged sherry: Bodegas Tradición fino sherry, £41.92
  • Best extra dry sherry: Tio Diego amontillado (Valdespino) sherry, £25.50

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Best sherry 2024

Gonzalez-Byass Cristina

Gonzalez-Byass Cristina

Best sherry for a sweet yet balanced sip

This is a blend of oloroso with some PX. On the nose, you’ll find figs, dried fruit and molasses, while on the palate the sweetness is balanced by a lively acidity with some dried apricot notes and a lingering flavour of walnuts.

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Barbadillo Solear Manzanilla

Barbadillo Solear Manzanilla

Best sherry for seafood pairings

Oh wow, lovely nose! This is sheer essence of manzanilla with apple, salty seaside notes, almonds and herbs – there’s even a little fennel in there. This is huge fun and best enjoyed with seafood.

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Williams & Humbert 12 Year Old Amontillado

Williams & Humbert 12 Year Old Amontillado

Best sherry for bold, savoury sips

A little of this intensely flavoured amontillado goes a long way. It’s very dry and salty with notes of orange peel, toffee and toasted almonds. Try it with cured ham for a taste sensation.

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Morrisons Palo Cortado

Morrisons Palo Cortado

Best sherry for rare, complex flavour

A palo cortado is a rare dry style that has the body of an oloroso but the flavours of an amontillado. This example comes from Lustau and has rich flavours of hazelnut, butterscotch and dates.

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Hidalgo PX Triana

Hidalgo PX Triana

Best refreshing sherry

Some PX can be a bit cloying but not this one from Hidalgo in Sanlúcar. While it is incredibly sweet and crammed with dried fruit, there’s also an orange blossom freshness that makes it surprisingly sippable.

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Morrisons The Best Oloroso sherry

A small bottle of Morrison's port set against a white background

Best nutty sherry

What a treat to find a supermarket-own label of such quality. Made by Lustau, one of the great names of sherry, this award-winning sherry is fresh, tangy and outrageously nutty. There’s Brazil nuts, walnuts and almonds all wrapped in muscovado sugar, with a bone dry finish. Read our full review of Morrisons The Best Oloroso

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Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana manzanilla sherry

A bottle of manzanilla sherry against a white background

Best dry sherry

Made by the sea in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, manzanilla is the freshest, driest and most irresistible style of sherry, and this is the world’s bestselling example of the style. One sip and you’ll see why, it’s loaded up with fresh Cox’s apples and salted almonds. Read our full review of Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana manzanilla sherry

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Gonzalez Byass Matusalem oloroso sherry

A bottle of sherry and the box it comes with set against a white background

Best PX sherry

This 30 year old blend of 75% oloroso with 25% PX is a symphony in sherry. Stick your nose in and it smells like an old navy rum; take a sip and it explodes with raisins, molasses, salted caramel and a finish of walnuts that goes on for a good half an hour. Read our full review of Gonzalez Byass Matusalem oloroso sherry.

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El Maestro Sierra PX sherry

A bottle of sherry set against a beige backdrop

Best sweet sherry

Pedro Ximinez (PX) contains around 400g per litre of sugar and is usually used for blending. Some examples can be a bit much on their own but this one has a freshness that makes it extremely drinkable. Try poured on ice cream, as a sweetener in cocktails or on its own as a pudding in a glass. Read our full review of El Maestro Sierra PX sherry.

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Bodegas Tradición fino sherry

A bottle of sherry in front of a white background

Best aged sherry

Tradición is a relatively new name in sherry, but the firm has illustrious antecedents. Aged for around 12 years, this is about as old as a fino can get. It’s massively rich with a texture of an old white burgundy or vintage champagne. Read our full review of Bodegas Tradición fino sherry.

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Tio Diego amontillado (Valdespino) sherry

A bottle of amontillado sherry set against a white background

Best extra dry sherry

A single vineyard amontillado from one of the most traditional producers in the region. This smells a little like a malt whisky or old cognac with a touch of smokiness; in the mouth it’s bone dry with salted almonds but with a refreshing lift to it. Read our full review of Tio Diego amontillado (Valdespino) sherry.

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How long does sherry last once opened?

Broadly speaking sherry falls into two categories: those that are aged with oxygen contact and those that aren’t. In the latter category are fino and manzanilla wines. These are best kept in the fridge and drunk within four days of opening or they start to lose freshness. Other styles of sherry like cream, amontillado and oloroso can be kept open for weeks. After a while, however, they will lose some intensity and start to taste tired, so don’t keep them for much longer than a month. Any sherry that isn’t quite up to snuff can be used for cooking, so never chuck an old bottle away.

How is sherry made?

Almost all sherry is made from the palomino fino, a white grape, grown in a region known as the ‘sherry triangle’ in southern Spain. The lightest style called fino is made from a gentle pressing of the grapes. The wine is usually fortified with brandy up to 15% and aged under a layer of yeast called flor which protects the wine from oxygen. A manzanilla is a fino that comes from the seaside town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

A fino that is aged longer until the flor dies and it starts to gently oxidise is called an amontillado. Oloroso sherries don’t develop the flor so they age entirely with oxygen contact. They are fortified to around 18% ABV.

Sherry in its natural state is dry but there are wines labelled as cream, amoroso, medium or sweet oloroso which are sweetened using an intense type of sherry called PX (pedro ximénez) which you sometimes see bottled on its own. Almost all sherries are blended in a series of barrels called a solera system so they contain multiple vintages.

What does sherry taste like?

Dry styles like fino and manzanilla have a taste of fresh apples combined with almond, yeasty Marmite and bready notes. Not unlike a champagne of white burgundy. Amontillados take those flavours and add walnuts, orange peel and often a salty tang. Olorosos, in contrast, taste of Brazil nuts, dates and molasses, while palo cortado sits somewhere between oloroso and amontillado in flavour. Sweeter styles of sherry have flavours of dried fruit with a distinct nuttiness, while PX bottled on its own is like liquid Christmas pudding. It is marvellous sipped very slowly or poured on vanilla ice cream.

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