The October networking meeting of the Andover Women in Business Club at the Keystone Hall broke from routine by enjoying its speaker before and not after dinner. Not wanting to ‘spoil the palate’ by eating first, Kieran O’Kelly, a speaker with many years experience in the wine trade, introduced members to a sherry tasting, surprising many with the range of flavours and colours available.

Despite being brought up by teetotal parents, Kieran came to enjoy making his own wine and beer, regularly attending festivals and becoming a member of CAMRA. His love of food and drink encouraged him to cook from an early age, which in later years provided him with a happy alternative vocation.

Following 35 years in the British Army, Kieran worked for the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, who ardently encouraged staff to train and develop and Kieran finally found himself knowledgeable enough to deliver training courses to others. Redundancy necessitated a change of direction and Kieran took the opportunity to train as a chef, allowing him to run his own catering business, MRI Catering, providing high quality food and service to the discerning diner.

Keiran explained that sherry is a fortified wine, produced in Spain has many different styles, including the well-known sweet and dry. Generally regarded outside the wine trade today as unfashionable, sherry sales have slumped over the years, with many more people choosing to drink today’s more affordable wines. “Sherry is not drunk as often as in the past“ Kieran explained, “but it is an interesting fact that more is still sold in the UK than in Spain itself!”

Members sampled six different varieties, from a pale-coloured, lemony Tio Pepe through to a deep-brown, honey-flavoured Old East India and finally one of the best of sherries, the Solera 1842, at £24 per bottle!

Sherry tasting - looking at colour

An ancient aging process, known as Solera, means sherry barrels are laid alongside each other and stacked three-high, with tubes linking barrels from top to bottom.

Unlike wine-making, sherry barrels are left uncorked and only five-sixths full, deliberately allowing air to enter. Yeasts grow on the surface, protecting the fermenting sherry from the air but allowing any remaining sugar to be extracted.

When it is time to draw off the matured sherry, 15% only is taken from the bottom barrel, allowing 15% from the younger barrel above to mix with the remaining sherry in the bottom barrel, and the even younger top barrel to mix with the middle barrel: this continual mixing prevents sherry from being given a vintage.

Members clearly enjoyed learning about sherry and experimenting with the different flavours. Being a networking meeting, it also allowed members to promote their businesses by displaying goods and talking to one another in greater detail about their services.