Recommendations

Gazpacho with Valdespino Fino Inocente Single Vineyard

In the glass next to the plate is a gazpacho that has been in the fridge for an hour: tomato, cucumber, green pepper and garlic, with stale bread, olive oil and sherry vinegar. The fino sets a pale, bone-dry wine against it that takes up the acidity of that vinegar instead of fighting it.

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From the shelf

The bottle

Inocente comes from Valdespino and is a fino from a single vineyard: pago Macharnudo Alto near Jerez de la Frontera, on the white chalk soil called albariza. The grape is one hundred percent Palomino and the must is fermented not in steel but in barrels of American oak, which is unusual for a fino and gives the wine more body. It then matures for well over eight years biologically under the velo de flor in a solera with ten criaderas; at bottling the wine is about ten years old. That layer of yeast shuts the wine off from the air, turns alcohol into acetaldehyde and consumes glycerol and residual acids. The bottle stands at 15 percent alcohol and comes in 75 centilitres.

Valdespino Fino Inocente Single Vineyard

The combination

Why this works together

On paper gazpacho is hostile to wine: there is thirty millilitres of sherry vinegar in a small litre of soup, and wine that comes alongside a lot of vinegar generally tastes flat. With a fino that is different, because it comes from the most acidic and driest corner of the sherry region itself and brings no residual sweetness that could clash with the acetic acid. On top of that the sherry vinegar comes from the same region and the same palomino, so both have the same aromatic root. The second thing the wine does is take away the olive oil: fifty millilitres in the jug, and the acidity and the 15 percent alcohol carry that fat away. And there is the almond note from the eight years under flor, which gives the gazpacho a nutty edge it does not have by itself. The Consejo mentions gazpacho with fino in so many words.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 1 hour and 15 minutes, of which 15 minutes of hands-on work
  • Type starter

What you need

  • 1 kg roma or plum tomatoes
  • 1 green pointed pepper
  • 1 cucumber
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 50 g stale farmhouse bread
  • 250 ml cold water
  • 50 ml extra virgin olive oil
  • 30 ml sherry vinegar
  • 5 g salt

How to make it

  1. Cut the tomatoes, the pepper, the cucumber and the garlic into pieces and put them with the old bread in a blender jug.
  2. Add the olive oil, the cold water, the sherry vinegar and the salt.
  3. Blend everything for four minutes on the highest setting, so that the texture becomes really smooth.
  4. Pour the soup through a fine sieve and press down with a ladle so that skins and seeds are left behind.
  5. Put the gazpacho in the fridge for at least two hours.
  6. Serve it cold in glasses or deep plates and serve fried bread croutons and finely chopped raw vegetables separately alongside.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this fino at 6 to 8 degrees, and for a cold starter preferably at the lower end of that; in its own handbook the Consejo uses 5 to 7 degrees. Use a catavinos or white wine glass of about 200 millilitres, filled by a third. An opened fino keeps only briefly: about a week with the bottle closed in the fridge. With this ten-year-old bottle that is an extra pity, so pour it at a table where it will be finished.

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