By the time I knew her, my granny was in her whisky and water era, but my dad clearly remembers a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream in the drinks cupboard, ready to pour for friends after church in the 1970s. This is the enduring image of cream sherry, one that it has struggled to shake off. While other sherries – bone-dry fino and manzanilla (made by ageing palomino grapes under a yeast layer called flor), oxidative amontillado or oloroso, and sweet, single varietals such as pedro ximénez (PX) – have acquired new cachet among younger drinkers, not least because they’re relatively affordable, cream is the emblematic Little English tipple of a bygone time.
Britain was sherry’s biggest export market for several centuries – the word is said to hark back to importers’ inability to pronounce the J in Jerez, where this large, colourful family of fortified wines originates. So Jerez became “sherez” became “sherry” – and cream sherry was developed specifically for the tastes of Victorian drinkers. The iconic Harveys, for example, named after its Bristol-based wine merchant/importer, arrived in the 1860s and by the early 1970s was shifting a million cases of the stuff each year (sales have since dropped to a mere fraction of that).
