Variants (6)
Recommended The Bar-Tender's Guide by Jerry Thomas (1862, p.86) — Jerry Thomas 1862
| 2 whole | ice — ice | base |
| 4 oz | sherry — wine | modifier |
- Put two lumps of ice in a glass.
- Fill with wine.
Ice: Ice
- Nose
- Cool sherry and faint oxidative nuttiness define the aroma.
- Palate
- It is plain, chilled, and direct, with temperature doing most of the work.
- Finish
- The finish is cool, dry, and lightly vinous.
- Summary
- A bare-bones chilled wine service that captures the importance of temperature as a differentiator in bar practice.
Sherry and Ice is historically useful for the same reason as the straight spirit serves: it reminds us that service distinctions mattered. Simply icing the wine was enough to constitute a recognised bar serve.
The ice should cool without overwatering the wine before service. This is a cold-service drink, not a diluted one.
Small entries like this stop us from imagining the historical bar as a place of constant complexity. Simplicity was also structured and named.
Recommended How to Mix Drinks; or, The Bon-Vivant's Companion by Jerry Thomas (1876, p.88) — Jerry Thomas 1876
| 2 whole | ice — ice | base |
| 4 oz | sherry — wine | modifier |
- Put two lumps of ice in a glass.
- Fill with wine.
Ice: Ice
- Nose
- Cool sherry and faint oxidative nuttiness define the aroma.
- Palate
- It is plain, chilled, and direct, with temperature doing most of the work.
- Finish
- The finish is cool, dry, and lightly vinous.
- Summary
- A bare-bones chilled wine service that captures the importance of temperature as a differentiator in bar practice.
Sherry and Ice is historically useful for the same reason as the straight spirit serves: it reminds us that service distinctions mattered. Simply icing the wine was enough to constitute a recognised bar serve.
The ice should cool without overwatering the wine before service. This is a cold-service drink, not a diluted one.
Small entries like this stop us from imagining the historical bar as a place of constant complexity. Simplicity was also structured and named.
The Mixicologist by C. F. Lawlor (1895, p.52) — C. F. Lawlor 1895
| 3 whole | ice — ice | base |
| sherry — sherry wine | modifier |
- Put two or three small lumps of ice in the glass.
- Place the decanter of wine before the customer.
Ice: Small ice lumps
- Nose
- Cool sherry aromatics rise plainly from the glass.
- Palate
- This is chilled plain service at its most minimal, but still a meaningful historical bar instruction.
- Finish
- The finish is dry, cool, and wine-led.
- Summary
- A tiny but useful record of plain chilled wine service inside the mixed-drink tradition.
These minimal service entries matter because they show how the same manuals that codify cocktails still also function as broader bar-service handbooks. That context helps keep the ontology from becoming artificially recipe-only.
The instruction centers service rather than mixing. Temperature and presentation are the drink.
Compared with Sherry and Bitters, this is even plainer, but historically it belongs in the same service universe.
The Reminder by Jacob A. Didier (1909, p.127) — Didier 1909
- Put a little cracked ice in a champagne glass.
- Fill up with sherry and serve.
Ice: A little cracked ice
This is worth keeping because it preserves the simplest fortified-wine cold service as a meaningful bar entry rather than a trivial aside.
Bartenders' Guide: How to Mix Drinks by Wehman Bros. (1912, p.63)
- Place one or two lumps of ice and a small bar-spoon in the glass, hand it to the customer with the bottle of sherry, and allow him to help himself.
Ice: Ice
Bartenders' Manual by Bartenders Association of America (1913, p.41)
- Present the glass with ice and a spoon and allow the customer to help himself from the sherry bottle.
Ice: Ice