Spanish sherry is a singularly stubborn wine. It exists on a grand scale, with its largest producers cranking out impressive quantities. Big brands such as Domecq are owned by even bigger names such as Allied Domecq. Yet Spanish sherry cannot shake its antique image, despite expensive marketing efforts to restore its former gloss.

The problem, in a nutshell, is a fall from fashion. A century ago, few wines were more pursued, discussed, and savored than Spanish sherry. And this was for good reason. Spanish sherry is among the world’s greatest wines.

The folks who appreciated it most also were its biggest buyers: the British. This is why so many of the best-known Spanish sherry shippers, to this day, have Anglo-Saxon names such as Harveys, Sandeman, Duff Gordon, Williams & Humbert, and Croft, among others.

Just how passionate the Brits were for Spanish sherry is explained in one (sherry dry) statistic: In the 1860s, Spanish sherry accounted for more than 40% of all wines imported into Britain.

And from Spain’s perspective, the importance of the Brits to the sherry trade was even more lopsided: 90% of all sherry exports went to Britain. Some of that was re-exported to other countries from English ports such as Bristol – hence such brands as Harveys Bristol Cream – but the Brits sopped up most of it themselves.

So what happened? How could Spanish sherry have lost its luster? The causes are multiple, including numerous knockoffs from California, South Africa, and Australia. The 19th-century market was flooded with cheap, bad, and sometime adulterated sherries, some of them Spanish. Some physicians wrongly charged that sherry was unhealthy, which was later proved unfounded.

By the start of the 20th century, Spanish sherry was, you might say, running out of esteem. Champagne was fashion’s favorite; Spanish sherry was your father’s drink. Is anything more deadly than that?

The coup de grace came when Queen Victoria died in 1901. Her son, King Edward VII, promptly sold off all the surplus sherry in the royal cellar, a whopping 60,000 bottles. The British court once consumed vast quantities of sherry, but entertaining virtually ceased upon the death of Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, in 1861. What happened next is a chief financial officer’s nightmare: For nearly 40 years, the royal steward kept buying sherry at the old rate, never mind that no one was drinking it.

The royal sherry auction was a devastating confirmation of sherry’s decline. Not only were the prices fetched derisory, but such a huge sale flooded the already weak market.

The 20th century was not kind to Spanish sherry. It began badly enough with the royal sherry sell-off. Then came two world wars, as well as Spain’s enforced dormancy under the Franco regime. In the meantime, tastes continued to evolve. A bright spot appeared briefly in the 1920s with the advent of the “sherry party,” but it didn’t last. At best, sherry was seen as a genteel alternative to the cocktail. Its once-prized role as the aperitif of choice was gone, routed by champagne.

The 21st century so far is little better. Still, Spanish sherry soldiers on, limping all the way. The figures are stark: In 1985, worldwide Spanish sherry sales totaled 17 million cases. By 1996 that had plummeted to 7 million cases. The freefall continues, with 2003 seeing export sales of just 4.6 million cases.

All of this is bad news for Spanish sherry producers. But it’s good news for wine lovers. How so? We’re now seeing finer, higher-quality Spanish sherries selling for swell prices. It’s easy enough to figure out. The Jerez district (which the Brits promptly anglicized into “sherry”) has better and worse vineyard sites. As demand decreases, the lesser vineyards fall by the wayside. Overall quality increases.

In sum, it’s an odd time for sherry. Sales have never been poorer. Yet quality is perhaps finer than it’s ever been in Jerez’s long history. For the adventurous, or just plain curious, wine lover, it’s a golden opportunity, if only because prices are so low for wines of such singular goodness.

HERE’S THE DEAL

LA GITANA, VINICOLA HIDALGO La Gitana is a manzanilla sherry, which is the lightest, driest, and most delicate of all sherries. The designation is reserved only for wines from the seaside zone around the town of Sanlucar de Barrameda. And it is indeed exceptional: very pale, slightly bitter, and resonant with a whiff of almonds and a salty tang. It’s always served cool.

That bracing tanginess, by the way, comes not from the chalk-white soil of the area, but from the sea air that penetrates Vinicola Hidalgo’s barrel-aging cellars. The cellars are mere blocks from the sea in Sanlucar de Barrameda. This is what the fellow who showed me around Hidalgo’s cellars said when I visited some years ago. I thought that was unusually frank. (A French producer would have insisted it came from the soil which could not, bien sur, be replicated anywhere else.)

Until recently, most manzanilla sherries exported to America were stale, as manzanilla is a wine best drunk within a year, at most, of when it is bottled. (Purists say six months.)

Hidalgo’s La Gitana is admirable in two respects: It’s bottled only when an order is received, and the back label of each bottle explicitly states the month and year of the bottle you have in hand. The idea is to ensure that what arrives here – assuming the wholesaler and retailer sell through expeditiously – is as fresh as what you’d get in a Barcelona tapas bar.

In short, La Gitana is the reference standard manzanilla. Serve it with just about any shrimp dish you can imagine, from a simple saute to a rich, complicated New Orleans etouffee. It also pairs beautifully with English farmhouse cheddar, among other hard cheeses.

The price is more than right: A 500-milliliter bottle is $9.95. Serve cool but not ice-cold, preferably in a regular white wine glass, which will allow its distinctive salty almond scent to blossom.