Late for lunch but always time for a quick sherry in La Venencia.

This is an old school sherry bar in the heart of Madrid and one I cannot walk past (even from a couple of streets away). The name comes from the term for the process of extracting sherry from the barrel on a long glass shaped ladle, and all they serve is sherry – manzanilla, fino, amontillado, palo cortado and oloroso.  All the sherries are from the barrel and all (bar the manzanilla) supplied by the artists at Emilio Hidalgo. It is as cheap and chips, you can have some almonds, olives or more interesting tapas with your sherry and it was pleasingly full of punters this lunchtime.

It is a must visit – if you are in Madrid and don’t go here you probably don’t deserve to.

This here is what I mean by a small but perfectly formed list of sherries – a great mix of styles (fino, amontillado fino, amontillado and oloroso) and of palomino (La Panesa, El Tresillo, Micaela, Gobernador and Fernando de Castilla) and PX (the capatazes).

It also forms part of a fantastic selection of wines by bottle and glass in general – here is the current edition.

And even that doesn’t do full justice to the remarkable Ana Losada – a gem of a sommelier – who often surprises the thirsty with something out of the box.Today she gave us a fantastic amontillado I had never heard of (and forgot to take note/photo of – see earlier blogging fails) – I will clearly need to return.

In fact, this is probably my favourite place to eat and drink in Madrid – not least because the food is every bit as good as the wine. Here is a piccy with the menu but if I start trying to tell you what they have this will become a food blog.

Wines by Lavinia – some top range sherries in this list but why not add a more basic oloroso, palo or amontillado? Seems a bit of a jump from top to botttom 

Just look at that list of sherries by the glass – quite magnificent