Metrovino's Richard Harvey: Evangelical about Sherry

Richard Harvey and his small, dedicated staff at Metrovino Fine Wines have always done things a bit differently.

This spring, they celebrated their 20th year of business in the space behind the Cookbook Company on 11th Avenue S.W. by making a fun video to contrast all the banal wine videos they had been exposed to over the years — and getting matching tattoos of the stylized corkscrew logos.

Nine got tattooed altogether — including Cole Larson's dad, George, who got his first tattoo at 73 — you can watch the video on the Metrovino website.

For two decades the small, charismatic wine shop has been an active part of the city's food scene, providing pairings for dinners and classes at the Cookbook Company, working with local producers and events, and helping Calgarians choose interesting wines and stock their cellars.

"It's an institution of wine obsession," manager Al Drinkle narrates at the opening of their video, "this celebration of all things that are vinous and beautiful. It's kind of a way of life."

"For me, the big thing is for people to have a place to come where wine is not subject to any form of elitism," says Harvey, who has been working in wine retail in Calgary for the past 30 years.

He met Cookbook Company owner Gail Norton in high school. They went to John G. Diefenbaker High School together.

"The store is there to create an openness, and not put up walls and barriers and narrow our field of influence," he explained.

'I want to be the person facing the customer'

After traveling with his wife, Rosemary, and a stint in Vancouver, they returned to Calgary in 1986 and Harvey got a job working as a wine rep.

"I sold Janet Webb some wine one day and she asked, 'Are you happy doing this? Wouldn't you rather work in retail?' And I thought, yes! I want to be the person facing the customer. I don't want to be the intermediary. I want to innovate, to do creative things."

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Harvey is well-traveled, trained briefly in Paris, and managed J. Webb at Glenmore Landing for 10 years before opening Metrovino in 1996.

"More or less I've been learning as I go," he says.

He and his wine-savvy staff are now sharing the knowledge that comes from a lifetime of tasting and traveling.

They recently expanded the space, opening a wine tasting and education centre to one side of the store where they host public and private wine tastings and do special events, often collaborating with the chefs and local producers who supply the Cookbook Company.

• Check out their fall and winter class calendar online

From Nov. 7 to 13, they'll be one of the only locations in Canada participating in Sherry Week — an annual celebration showcasing Sherry wines at events around the world.

Harvey says he feels evangelical about Sherry and they offer one of the best selections in Canada. Jerez, a city in southern Spain's Andalusia region, is his favourite wine city.

For six days next week, they'll pause at 5 p.m. for a glass of Sherry paired with tapas from local restaurants like Ox and Angela, Bar C and the new Bar Von Der Fels.

For $5 anyone can join in. One of the in-house Sherry enthusiasts will give a little talk, offering up some history and stories about the Sherry itself and the food pairing.

They're calling it Sherry speed dating — a quick opportunity to get to know one type of Sherry a little bit better.

"For a lot of people, Sherry is a revelation," Harvey says.

"Less and less people have the baggage associated with it, but with my generation, it came with a lot of baggage."

Great for cooking, drinking

He blames the big, industrial brands and imitation Sherries — the stuff made to be high alcohol, sweet and cheap, relegated to cooking with — for blinding people to the true nature of Sherry, a fortified wine from the south of Spain with a long history and tradition behind it.

"It's great for cooking, but is also a great drinking wine," Harvey says.

"It has more umami than any other wine I know. It's mind-bogglingly, beautifully complex — there's just so much history and stories attached to it.

If Sir Francis Drake hadn't raided the port of Cadiz and stolen 500 or so barrels of Sherry and taken them back to England — because he was a pirate — it wouldn't have shown up in Shakespearean time and in English culture the way that it did," he explained.

"It's always been hip," they'll argue if you mention Sherry is now coming back into vogue.

They're some of the few hip enough to already know that.