Sherry style
Fermented dry, then fortified and aged deliberately in contact with air, either under a film of flor yeast or without one. The only wine style where oxidation is the technique rather than the fault.
The numbers
Each bar drawn against all 30 styles
Alcohol
15-20%
15% - 20%
Titratable acidity
4-6 g/L
4 - 6
pH
3.1-3.5
3.1 - 3.5
Residual sugar
0-15 g/L
0 - 15
Serve at
8-14 C
Worth opening after
2 years
and it keeps improving to roughly 40 years
Sulphite at pH 3.30
26 mg/L
free SO2, for 0.8 mg/L molecular
What goes wrong
Half-measures. Either commit to a flor and keep the vessel part-empty and undisturbed, or commit to oxidative ageing; a topped-up barrel gives you neither.
Usually made from
At least one of these figures is set by an appellation or labelling rule somewhere. The rest are typical published analyses of commercial examples.