RAVE OF THE WEEK
By Eric E. Harrison (Contact)
LITTLE ROCK — At the end of a recent dinner at Lulav, I got to talking with the waiter about dessert wines, and he brought me and my dining companion each a taste of a fantastic sherry - Alvear Pedro Ximenez Solera 1927. Sherry is a fortified wine (the maker adds some brandy distillate back into the wine, which boosts its alcohol content to about 16 percent). This one is made in Spain, from Pedro Ximenez grapes (the source of the best sherries; the wine takes its name from the town of Jerez).
This particular sherry aged for about 70 years in a vat, or solera, before somebody started putting it into bottles, so it has aged out nicely, smooth and warm, sweet but not cloying, and with less of that nutty flavor that characterizes a lot of younger sherries. It comes in a split (375ml) bottle.
Lulav charges $14 a glass, which is pretty steep even for nectar of the gods, so my friendand I started scouring the area’s top wine shops for a bottle of our very own.
Not only couldn’t we find one, nobody knew what it was.The Lulav folks couldn’t put their finger on just where they had gotten it. Nor could we find any other area restaurants that were pouring the stuff.
Just as we were about to give up in dismay and turn to one of those clandestine ship-it-to-usquasi-legallyunder-thetable Internet outfits, we discovered that the wine does have an Arkansas distributor - Moon Distributing, in fact - and that it’s due for general circulation sometime this month. I’m getting in line now.
Alvear Pedro Ximenez Solera 1927, $14 a glass at Lulav, price for a 375ml bottle TBA (price range on the Internet is $16-$24 plus shipping).
This article was published Friday, June 6, 2008.
Weekend, Pages 66 on 06/06/2008
