Treasures of Spain

I went looking for an ingredient in yet another Guinness dish I wished to try to add (or not add) to the menu. I thought it would be fairly easy to find, but it wasn't! All I wanted was some sherry vinegar which is supposedly stocked at your local grocery store. Nope. Well, Trader Joe's must have it! Nope. Williams-Sonoma? Didn't see it. Eventually, I found it at Whole Foods! Hooray for them! In trying to understand better what I was buying, I did a quickie google on sherry vinegar. The obvious I realized already which is that it is made from sherry wine. What I learned is that it's similar to balsamic in flavor and that it comes from the Jerez, Spain region where it can only be produced. And like a very good aged balsamic, the cost of a few ounces could be in the thousands. To make the stuff, it's the typical wine barrel thing with the different woods used at different stages, etc...

In Jerez, though, they use the Solera and Criadera method wherein the barrels are stacked up in a pyramid. The bottom row is the solera where the oldest vinegar resides and thus where the bottled stuff comes from. When a portion of the vinegar is removed, the next oldest vinegar from the row above the solera is put in. So on and so forth up the pyramid to the topmost which is the youngest vinegar. That top barrel is then filled up with new vinegar. Basically, all the other rows are criadera and each row is a different age of vinegar.

I took a small lick of the sherry vinegar I bought (50 years old) and it's not as pungent as some of the balsamics I've had. However, I've never had as old a vinegar. I see how it's balsamic-like, but it definitely has a slightly different taste. I can't describe it much better than that as I have not really explored its flavor makeup.

Speaking of alcohol in cooking, I've discovered that cooking with Guinness is really tasty and smells great. Beer just doesn't have the complexity of Guinness. It's just smelly. =P Now...if only I could just enjoy Guinness as a drink...