Cream Sherry

Cream is the sweetest of the blended sherries. The Jerez Consejo Regulador defines it as a wine built mainly on oloroso, aged by oxidation from start to finish, with a share of naturally sweet wine or rectified concentrated must, and between 115 and 140 grams of sugar per litre. Barbadillo's technical sheet puts this one at 121 grams, near the bottom of that band.

The dry part is oloroso, a blend of several. Skurnik, the house's US importer, gives the recipe as 60% oloroso and 40% Pedro Ximénez, both aged oxidatively for three years before they are blended. Fells, the UK importer, also describes it as oloroso and Pedro Ximénez. The ingredients declared for its sale in Ukraine name both Palomino Fino and Pedro Ximénez, and also list concentrated grape must and caramel colouring. The house sheet itself names only Palomino Fino, the grape behind the oloroso.

How old the blend is depends on whom you ask. The house sheet and Skurnik both say three years. Fells gives an average solera age of about eight years, and the Ukrainian importer WineWine's listing says seven years in solera.

By the house sheet, the solera lives in four of Barbadillo's bodegas in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Potro, Bonanza, Compañía and San Guillermo), some 2,541 American oak casks in all. The same sheet traces the fruit to the house's Gibalbín and Santa Lucía vineyards in Jerez Superior. A house best known for manzanilla, wine that lives under flor, makes this one from wine aged in contact with air.