Top 5 Webinars to Learn More About Sherry Wine

Here at Elevage Wine Coaching, we’re big fans of webinars. Not only do they help present textbook materials in a different way, like podcasts, they’re something that you can put on in the background while you work. And with recordings, you can pause, rewind and review things that really jump out.

But finding good webinars isn’t always the easiest. While sites like VirtualWineEvents.com have thousands of recording links (just search for a topic and click the Search Video box), some webinars are more useful than others.

So here are our Top 5 Webinars most worth your time to check out.

1.) Lustau : Sherry 101 w/Lucas Paya

We’re going to order this from Village level (or introductory) content down up to Premier Cru and Grand Cru where the details get more technical and geeky. For an explanation of these different tiers, check out our Services page on this site.

The Sherry house of Lustau is a leader when it comes to educating consumers with their Sherry certification course. Their educators frequently host webinars like this one that are a great intros into some of the complexity and diversity of Sherry.

2.) Sherry and Food Pairing with Lauren Denyer DipWSET

Denyer is an educator and Sherry specialist for WSET School London. In this hour-long webinar, she covers a lot of the details in the WSET Diploma text about Sherry, with some technical details, but overall this would be a good introductory and upper Premier Cru level webinar.

3.) Deep dive into Sherry with Ben Howkins & Charles Metcalfe

67 Pall Mall is a private wine industry club based in the UK. But during the pandemic, they virtually flung open their doors to the public with lots of geeky good webinars. Usually around an hour-long, they featured industry experts—like Ben Howkins, author of Sherry: Maligned, Misunderstood, Magnificent-as well as leading producers such as Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana and Barbadillo. So definitely Premier Cru and Grand Cru level stuff.

To taste the wines, you need to be a member (and live in the UK and EU) with a virtual option available, but their webinars are jam-packed with great info that is worth watching even without the wine. Though you could certainly find many of these producers from other retailers.

4.) Spain Webinar Part 2 (Sherry Section at 01:24:44)

GuildSomm webinars are awesome—but usually quite long. This 2 hour plus webinar with Master Sommelier Chris Tanghe is the second part of an in-depth series on Spain. The whole thing is well worth a watch but, thankfully, you can jump straight to the Sherry section at the 01:24:44 mark. This definitely gets nerdy (despite Tanghe’s joking promise not) so is excellent for Premier Cru and Grand Cru level studies.

5.) Mastering Sherry for WSET Level 4 (WSET Diploma): Part 3 - The Vineyard

Jimmy Smith is a UK based wine educator that is behind the very awesome Wine with Jimmy YouTube channel. He produces numerous wine videos at both Premier Cru and Grand Cru level including this excellent series on Sherry.

We highlighted here Part 3 on the Vineyard because, if you’re pressed for time, focusing on the unique climate, soil and viticulture details of Sherry is often vastly overlooked. Everybody likes to jump straight to the winemaking details about flor & solera. Of course, those are important but as the well worn adage goes—wine is made in the vineyard.

But we thoroughly recommend all of Jimmy’s videos as well worth your time.