Fond is closing out its 2026 wine series with sherry. The Fond sherry pairing dinner, called Taste of Spain, is Wednesday, November 18, at 6:30 p.m. at the Wallingford restaurant, and it costs $125 per person, not including tax and gratuity. Seating is extremely limited, and reservations are required through Resy.
Chefs Lee Styer and Jessie Prawlucki-Styer cook a four-course menu, working with The Perfect Pour Experience and selections from Lustau Fine Selected Wines. It is the last of the three fall dinners that began with Greece in September and continued with Grace Winery’s Pennsylvania wines in October.
The date follows International Sherry Week, which runs November 2 to 8 and is in its 13th year. The Fond sherry pairing dinner uses the week as a reason to put a wine that many people overlook at the center of a meal.
What the Fond Sherry Pairing Dinner Pours
Sherry covers a wide range, which is the reason a pairing dinner works. Fino and Manzanilla are the driest and lightest styles. Amontillado and Palo Cortado are nuttier and deeper, Oloroso is fuller and richer, and East India Solera is a sweeter style. One dinner can move through all of them.
The evening opens with a welcome Rebujito made with Jarana Fino. A Rebujito is a long, chilled sherry drink served with soda, so the night starts with something light. After that, guests move through a range of sherry styles: Fino, Amontillado, Palo Cortado, Oloroso and East India Solera. Each is paired with a dish from Styer and Prawlucki-Styer, so the styles show up in the order of the menu.
Lustau describes itself as the only winery producing wines in all three cities of the Sherry Triangle: Jerez de la Frontera, El Puerto de Santa María and Sanlúcar de Barrameda. The winery has a 130-year history, and the dinner draws on its full range.
The Fond Sherry Pairing Dinner Menu
The first course is a crispy octopus salad with chorizo, caper aioli, frisée and piperade. It comes with two sherries, a Manzanilla Papirusa and an Amontillado ‘Los Arcos.’ The dry Manzanilla is a natural partner for fried seafood.
The second course is yellowfin tuna with paella cake, fennel agrodolce and sauce basquaise, served with a Palo Cortado Peninsula. The third is a roasted Iberian Duroc pork rack with Tortilla Española, Manchego, artichokes and romesco sauce, paired with the Jerez de la Frontera Oloroso Don Nuño.
Dessert is chocolate flan with polvorones, the almond shortbread, alongside the Jerez de la Frontera East India Solera. The menu moves from the lightest sherry to the sweetest, which gives the evening a clear arc from the first pour to the last bite.
Where the Fond Sherry Pairing Dinner Fits in the 2026 Series
Fond launched its monthly pairing dinners in May with a night of Oregon Pinots, and the dinners have taken one region or producer at a time and built a menu around it. The Fond sherry pairing dinner changes the subject from table wine to sherry.
Fond is best known as an acclaimed French BYOB, so a Spanish menu is a change of cuisine as well as of drink. A dinner with the pours included is a small departure for the room. The Perfect Pour chooses the bottles to fit each course, which means the pairings come as a set built for the menu.
Reserving the Fond Sherry Pairing Dinner
The Fond sherry pairing dinner is Wednesday, November 18, at 6:30 p.m., and the price is $125 per person before tax and gratuity. Reservations are on Resy, and seats are limited.
The menu draws on Spain’s culinary heritage, from octopus and paella cake to pork with romesco, and the sherries are chosen to meet each dish. Spanish food and sherry have been paired for generations in the places that make both, and Fond is giving Wallingford a chance to see why.
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