Brandy is a distilled spirit made from wine or fermented fruit, typically 35–60% alcohol. Sherry is a fortified wine from southern Spain, usually 15–22% alcohol. They’re connected more closely than most people realize: grape brandy is actually added to sherry during production to raise its alcohol content, and both can be aged using the same barrel system in the same corner of Spain.
How Each One Is Made
Brandy starts as wine (or occasionally cider or other fermented fruit juice) that gets distilled, concentrating the alcohol and flavor compounds. The resulting spirit is then aged in oak barrels, where it picks up color, sweetness, and complexity over time. Cognac, the most famous style, must be double-distilled in copper pot stills and aged at least two years in French oak. Other styles follow different rules, but the core process is always fermentation followed by distillation.
Sherry starts as a dry white wine made primarily from Palomino Fino grapes grown in the Jerez region of southwestern Spain. After fermentation produces a neutral white wine at around 11–12.5% alcohol, the cellar master tastes each barrel and classifies it. Some wines are destined to age under a living layer of yeast called flor, which protects the wine from oxygen and gives it a distinctive tangy, bready character. Others are directed toward oxidative aging, where contact with air creates richer, nuttier flavors. After classification, grape brandy is blended in to raise the alcohol level: wines headed for the flor style are fortified to about 15.5%, while those meant for oxidative aging go up to 18%, a level that kills the flor yeast entirely.
The Solera Aging System
One of sherry’s most distinctive features is the Criaderas and Solera system, a method of fractional blending developed in the 18th century. Barrels are arranged in tiers. The bottom tier (the solera) holds the oldest wine and is the source for bottling. When wine is drawn from the solera, roughly one-third at a time, it gets replaced with wine from the tier above. That tier is then topped up from the next one above it, and so on, with the youngest wine entering at the top. This constant blending of older and younger wines produces a remarkably consistent product year after year. A single bottle of sherry may contain traces of wine that are decades old.
Most brandy ages in a more conventional way: sitting in oak barrels for a set number of years. But there’s an interesting overlap. Brandy de Jerez, the Spanish brandy made in sherry country, is aged in the same solera system and often in barrels that previously held sherry. So while brandy and sherry are fundamentally different drinks, their production methods can literally share the same casks and the same aging technique.
Types of Brandy
Brandy is a broad category with many regional styles. Cognac and Armagnac are both French grape brandies from specific regions, each with protected status and strict production rules. Calvados is an apple brandy from Normandy, distilled from cider. Pisco is a grape brandy from South America. Brandy de Jerez comes from Spain’s sherry-producing region. Then there are unaged fruit brandies (called eaux-de-vie) from across Europe, including schnapps, pálinka, and rakia. Pomace brandies like Italian grappa are made from the leftover skins, seeds, and pulp of winemaking rather than from the wine itself.
Age statements on brandy labels follow specific minimums, at least for Cognac and Armagnac. VS (Very Special) means at least two years in oak. VSOP (Very Special Old Pale) means at least four years. XO (Extra Old) means at least ten years. Other brandy styles may not follow these exact terms.
Types of Sherry
Sherry comes in a surprisingly wide range of styles, from bone-dry to intensely sweet. The dry wines include Fino and Manzanilla (light, pale, aged entirely under flor), Amontillado (which starts under flor and finishes with oxidative aging), Oloroso (fully oxidative, darker and richer), and Palo Cortado (a rare style that falls between Amontillado and Oloroso). All of these contain less than five grams of sugar per liter.
Sweet sherries are made by blending dry wines with naturally sweet wines or concentrated grape must. These include Cream, Medium, Pale Cream, and Sweet styles. At the far end of the sweetness spectrum sit Moscatel and Pedro Ximénez, made from sun-dried grapes and intensely syrupy. The color range across all these styles runs from pale greenish-yellow in young Finos to deep mahogany in Pedro Ximénez.
Flavor and How They’re Served
Brandy tastes like a spirit: warm, concentrated, and complex, with notes that vary by style and age but often include dried fruit, vanilla, caramel, oak, and spice. It’s typically sipped neat or with a splash of water, served in a snifter at room temperature. Brandy also works in cocktails (the Sidecar, Brandy Alexander) and is widely used in cooking for flambéing and deglazing.
Sherry drinks like wine, not like a spirit. Dry sherries like Fino and Manzanilla are crisp, saline, and refreshing, best served chilled. They pair naturally with olives, charcuterie, salted nuts, anchovies, oysters, and seafood. Fino’s tangy, bready quality makes it one of the few wines that works well alongside soup. Oloroso and Amontillado bring deeper flavors of walnut, toffee, and dried fruit, standing up to richer dishes. Sweet sherries pair with desserts, blue cheese, and dried fruits. The food-friendliness of sherry is one of its defining characteristics, and it’s become a favorite among sommeliers for pairing with everything from dim sum to green chili enchiladas.
Alcohol Content
This is one of the most practical differences between the two. Sherry ranges from about 15% to 22% alcohol by volume, putting it in the territory of other fortified wines like port and Madeira. You pour it like wine, in smaller glasses than a regular table wine but far more generously than you’d pour a spirit.
Brandy, as a distilled spirit, typically lands between 35% and 45% alcohol by volume for most bottled products. During aging in the solera system, Brandy de Jerez can sit at 65–80% alcohol before being diluted for bottling. The gap in strength means brandy and sherry occupy completely different roles at the table: sherry is a wine you drink with food, while brandy is a spirit you sip after a meal or mix into cocktails.
The Geographic Connection
Both drinks have deep roots in the Jerez region of Spain, and this shared geography creates the overlap that sometimes confuses people. Sherry takes its English name from “Jerez.” Brandy de Jerez is distilled from wines (mainly Airén and Palomino grapes) and aged in the same town, in the same types of barrels, often using the same solera system. And as mentioned, brandy is a key ingredient in making sherry itself, added during the fortification step that raises the wine’s alcohol level.
To be labeled “Sherry,” the wine has historically needed to come from the Jerez-Xérès-Sherry or Manzanilla-Sanlúcar de Barrameda designated regions. As of August 2025, the European Commission approved a change allowing some sherries that naturally reach the required alcohol strength to skip fortification entirely and still carry the Sherry name. These unfortified wines will coexist alongside the traditional fortified versions, expanding what “sherry” can mean while keeping it tied to its home region.