Brands Report 2022: Sherry

12 January, 2022

By Hamish Smith

Perhaps one of the smaller categories of the Brands Report, sherry is significant nonetheless. More than three-quarters of venues we polled stock sherry behind their bar. And most of those that do have two brands, while more than half will have three or more.

That’s not surprising given the interest in sherry in recent times. It’s a category that keeps on getting bigger, the more you pick away. There are sherries with puckering acidity, air-aged wines with nutty character and rounded juicy styles with vinous sweetness. And while some sherry will be sold by the glass, plenty ends up in cocktails too – sometimes as a shift from vermouth in a twist on a classic, but also commonly in original cocktails.

They’re not the most en vogue, but Sherry Cobblers and Bamboos are an occasional calling card in classically oriented bars too.

Here, in and around Jerez, brands come in the form of bodegas, offering the breadth of the category through various sub-brands. The largest, González Byass, tops our last, and while in previous years we’ve separated out its Tío Pepe line, we’ve counted its famous green-bottled no under the umbrella of its parent brand this year.

So to the numbers. All of those bars that stocked sherry had a González Byass product this year, while more than half of our sample said it was their number one pour. In the trending list, more than half said González Byass was the hot brand.

In second, Lustau is another bodega to o er the gamut of styles, from manzanilla to amontillado, palo cortado, oloroso, cream, muscatel and Pedro Ximenez. More than a quarter attested to Lustau being their go-to sherry, while more than a half said it was among their top-3 choices.

Sandeman, a wine company which deals in fortifieds across Iberia, was much less likely to be a house pour than González Byass and Lustau but was a top-three sherry in 13% of our sample. La Gitana and Valdespino make up our list of five, but were found to be occasional features of our sample of the world’s best bars.

Methodology

The results of this report are the culmination of a questionnaire of 106 bars around the world, each cherry-picked to take part based on their performance in global bar awards. We aim to find out not only which brands sell best but also what’s trending. These two data sets give us an insight into the brands that are doing the most volume and the brands that are hot right now.