Craig LaBan

‘Terence Lewis is almost single-handedly revolutionizing the way Philly sees sherry,” Mitchell Skwer, a local wine distributor, recently told me, as he’s watched Jamonera’s beverage director grow the restaurant’s list to what may be the largest in the country, with 45-plus offerings. Of course, aside from Amada and Bar Ferdinand, Jamonera doesn’t have much local competition. Sherry, the fortified wine made near the Spanish town of Jerez, is one of world’s most misunderstood drinks, long misperceived as little more than cheap, sweet cooking plonk. But take a sipping tour of just a few copitas of genuine sherries at Jamonera and you’ll discover how incredibly diverse and food-friendly a good sherry can be. Made from white palomino, Pedro-Ximénez, or moscatel grapes, then fortified with brandy, sherry can be as light and bone-dry as fino, as dark and complex as oloroso, or as tangy with dried-fruit sweetness for dessert sipping as a “PX” (short for Pedro-Ximénez.) I loved two, in particular, at Jamonera: a chilled glass of bracing La Cigarrera manzanilla, a subset of fino whose proximity to the ocean in Sanlúcar de Barrameda lends an almost oceanic brininess, ideal for tapas of olives, anchovies, and seafood a la plancha. For richer foods, we turned to the Dios Baco Amontillado, an oxidized, darker fino whose ambered complexity teased sweetness of nuts, nutmeg, and brown sugar on the nose, but was dry on the tongue, perfect for roasted mushrooms, albondigas, and plancha-seared meats.