Mr Grumpy

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By Mr Grumpy - Fri 6th May 2011

 

Where I was born and bred, if I had gone into a pub and asked for a Schooner of sweet sherry, I would have been lucky to have escaped the establishment without having received a sound thrashing.

And rightly so.

Most of the pubs the I frequented back in the North served various types of real cask ale, maybe a couple of types of lager for the ladies and Asbo teens, Cider for the weirdos, and a row full of optics for the high-rollers.

Sherry, sweet or otherwise, was something that the likes of Mavis Riley and Emily Bishop drank on Coronation street, or was dragged from the back of a dusty drinks cabinet on christmas day to drizzle over a trifle before being put back for another year.

So a couple of weeks ago I was chatting with a few mates about whether or not it was acceptable for a bloke to order a sherry in a Spanish bar. I know the countless glossy travel magazines will rant on about the joys of sitting in an Andalusian Tapas bar sipping a dry 'Jerez' with a few slices of salty Jamon Iberico... etc... etc... but I was curious to know what the reality was away from the tourist hotspots of Seville.

So do 'real blokes' drink Sherry in the 'real Spain' (where the glossy mags don't often venture) ?

My first attempt at ordering a sherry fell on stony ground. My usual barman in my local bar just laughed and proceeded to give me my usual pint. My second attempt faired better - although he did have to ask me twice - and resulted in me being asked exactly what type of sherry I would like. How the hell would I know ? So I rattled off the only one that I knew that I could ask for confidently - 'Fino'.

I can only describe the taste as being a cross between a dry white wine, skillfully blended with a touch of mollases and a hint of nail polish remover. But each to their own...

The only reaction in the whole bar came from the barman himself, a shrug of the shoulders, and that came from his surprise that I had ordered something other than my usual Pint - something I don't think that I had ever done in my 7 years of frequenting the hostelry.

So the result was a null hypothesis - but if I had to stick my neck out I'd say that it was socially acceptable for a bloke to order a sherry, but maybe nowhere near as common as the Glossies would have you believe (at least not in my part of Spain).

And maybe I would have had a vicious beating from the locals if they could have been bothered to put their Campari and Soda's down.