Denmark wins Copa Jerez 2019

The 8th edition of the Copa Jerez, the prestigious biennial sherry food pairing competition for chefs and sommeliers, was held 28th and 29th of May 2019. The last couple of months, a whole series of teams have competed in national pre-selections to represent their country, and today the finalists have been working in Jerez to present their dishes to the jury.

Yesterday the event was kicked off with the thematic conference Copa Jerez Forum. They welcomed keynote speakers like Josep Roca of El Celler de Can Roca (talking about his experience of serving sherry in a restaurant), Ángel León from Aponiente (presenting some of his new cooking techniques and insights on wine pairing) and François Chartier (talking about molecular food pairing, specifically of sherry with chocolate). A few other talks discussed themes like the bottle ageing of sherry wines. Very interesting! Too bad there was no live streaming of the event this year.

In the cooking and wine pairing contest, each team (chef + sommelier) creates a starter, main course and dessert, accompanied by specific sherries. Here’s a full list of the finalists:

Le Corange *, Germany
Le Pilori *, Belgium
Clou *, Denmark
Bon Amb **, Spain
NoMad *, USA
Cheval Blanc *, Holland
Texture *, UK

This year all of participating restaurants had at least one Michelin star and from what I’ve heard the level was very, very high accross the board.

Restaurant Clou from Kopenhagen is the overall winner for 2019.

Their menu consisted of a first course with scallops and rye bread with green vinaigrette with the Fino Classic from Fernando de Castilla, a main dish of aged pigeon with a confit of citrus and sauce from its liver, paired to the Oloroso Soluqua from Bodegas Barón and ice cream of caramelised banana, with licorice, olive oil and coffee sauce paired to the Pedro Ximénez VOS from Bodegas Tradición. Creative dishes and textbook pairings I would say.

Besides the general Copa Jerez, there were some specific awards:

Best Chef: Martin Sørensen (Denmark)
Best Sommelier: Kim Reisig (Netherlands)
Best first course pairing: United Kingdom
Best main course pairing: Spain
Best dessert pairing: Denmark
Best creative pairing: United States

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Tags: 2019, Competition, Copa Jerez, Food Pairing, Restaurant, Sherry Wine, Wine Pairing

About the Author

Ruben is a Certified Sherry Educator who fell in love with sherry some 25 years ago, but switched to a higher gear in 2013 and started writing about it. Lived in Madrid for a couple of years, now back in Belgium. I also run a whisky blog over at www.whiskynotes.be