Sherry

Sherry, the afternoon drink of doddering grandmothers and great aunts, the choice companion to tapas for dedicated Andalusia-admirers, Falstaff’s beverage of choice, and the inspiration for a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, has a deeper past. Sherry was one of the sweet wines referred to as “sack,” a commodity that had been heavily traded to the Americas from colonial times. Sack was popular for three reasons. It was inexpensive compared with French wine, it had a high alcohol content because of its fortification with brandy (a practice no longer followed), and it was palatably sweet; all these traits led to its being drunk often by all classes, either alone or as part of a mixed drink. Sherry was used to make a type of American sangria, colloquially called sangaree, and was also the main ingredient of sack posset, a concoction of sherry, sometimes mixed with ale, cooked with sugar, eggs, and cream or milk, and finished off with spices, usually nutmeg or mace, and drunk at weddings in all of the colonies.