Product Review: Morrison's Fino Sherry – You, Me and Miss Marple

Do you watch Midsomer Murders? Do you wear cardigans? Does your kettle never get a chance to get cold due to the pints and pints of tea you drink as the day wears on? If your answers to all of these things amount to 'Yes!', 'Yes!' and 'My tea has gone cold, how can life possibly go on?', then it's a fair bet that your alcoholic tipple of choice is probably sherry.

To be fair, there are circumstances and environments where drinking the appropriate sherry is the sophisticated choice. But to many it probably symbolises aunties, librarians, sweet brown stuff that tastes something like cough medicine and something like treacle. To me it symbolises mums: or at least, if I visit my mum on a cold Sunday afternoon and she offers me an alcoholic refreshment, then it's almost certainly bound to be sherry.

But no, not all sherries are the same, and certainly not all of them are anything like the sherry your mum or your Aunt Elsie is are likely to give you. How about Morrison's Fino Sherry? Well, the great thing about cheap sherry is that it's, well, pretty damn cheap. And strong, too. I don't think I'm cutting to the chase and restricting myself to hard facts too brutally when I say that it does the job it was designed for, and does it well. It's dry and tangy, not one for the ladies with a taste for sweetie drinks. (I dump some fruit juice in it after a couple. Okay, you didn't hear me say that.)

I do find personally that sherry gives me a terrible, terrible hangover (or maybe just the cheap stuff). But that's the price you pay for being a cheap date (or a skinflint shut-in, however you choose to look at it.)