And, to the best of my knowledge, scotch distilleries do not blend in sherry.

And? What I’m getting is marketing hype. We’re dealing with a max contribution of 2.6%, not enough to add anything close to significant flavor componentry considering the overpowering contributions of both the malt character and the peat, each one of which is overpowering. No, no matter what these guys might say, it ain’t the wine, it’s the wood, and it’s the neutral wood. Obviously, the Mac likes less neutral wood, because it’s getting the oak after only 3 years of Sherry aging. When you’re dealing with a solera with very, very old cooperage which eventually must be retired, and which is the most likely cooperage to be sold for whisky use, 3 year old cooperage is really quite young, and not totally neutral.

Yes, there is such a thing as blending sherry, used specifically to make the flavors of the individual whiskeys in blended whiskeys come together. I don’t know to what extent it’s used in whisky, but in American, and presumably, Canadian Whiskeys, it’s used quite a bit. I’m not discussing here the blending of individual barrels, but rather Blended American whiskey and Blended Canadians.

Craig Winchell
GAN EDEN Wines

And, in your last paragraph, are you suggesting that whisky brands add sherry to blends to meld the flavors together?

Just wanted to point out to Jabbett that Tio Pepe is imported by Kedem, and quite possibly made for them. That is, the kosher Tio Pepe. Most Tio Pepe is the nonkosher wine, a very different tasting beverage, and to my mind and memory, far superior. Beware, because most of the Tio Pepe which is imported is definitely not kosher. Gonzalez Byas has been making it since long before Kedem began importing a kosher version.

I have told people for many years that the publicized use of Port and Sherry cooperage was a marketing ploy, and that the ideal was simply a neutral barrel. Finally, someone else is saying it as well. Unfortunately, the myth is that the barrels are not cleaned or rinsed prior to placing whisky into them. Of course they are. At the very least, they’re rinsed, and maybe even soda ashed. So the only wine remaining is between the fibers of the wood, unless the barrel was kashered by 3 sequential 24 hour soakings.

When is wine routinely added to whisky? Blending sherry is used to meld the flavors of blended whiskey. Yet even this use would not render the whisky or whiskey nonkosher.

The concept of bittul isn’t just saying that “because we don’t know, we’ll assume that they’re all like the majority, but certainly some of them are fine”; rather, it’s fundamentally changing the status of all items involved from one status to another. For example, if one piece of pig gets mixed in with 2 pieces of kosher meat, we don’t say that one of them is treif, but because of bittul we can eat them all; rather, we say that all 3 of them are kosher, as their status has fundamentally changed. If you look at it from this perspective, then truly kosher scotch (ie, aged in kosher sherry casks) isn’t possible.

That was me; I just forgot to log in. :-)

Obviously, that’s a logical assumption, but it’s also a logical assumption that truly kosher scotch aged in sherry casks is possible. A producer must seemingly just acquire some of Tio Pepe’s old casks!

Sherry, from my understanding, must be produced in Jerez, Spain. The J is pronounced “SH” and that’s why it’s called sherry. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Spanish producers have registered the names Jerez / Xérès / Sherry and will prosecute producers of similar wines from other places using the same name. By law, Sherry must come from the triangular area of the province of Cádiz between Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa María. However the name ‘Sherry’ is used as a semi-generic in the United States where it must be labeled with a region of origin such as American Sherry or California Sherry.

There is a good dry kosher sherry from Spain — Tio Pepe. Far better than Kedem’s.