In a secret Manchester location—part art gallery, part speakeasy—some of the city’s leading food and drink voices gathered for an underground supper club designed to challenge everything they thought they knew about sherry.
At the centre of the evening was chef Caroline Martins, one of the most exciting figures in Manchester’s food and drink scene. Brazilian-born and proudly Mancunian by adoption, Caroline has built a reputation for immersive, highly personal cooking that connects the flavours of her homeland with the energy and creativity of the North West. Her intimate Sampa chef’s-table experience has now been added to the Michelin Guide—recognition of a chef whose cooking is as full of warmth and personality as it is ambition.
Sampa was the natural home for this Sherry Supper Club. Guests arrived without knowing precisely what awaited them, stepping into a clandestine space filled with art, atmosphere and a sense of discovery. Around the table was a cross-section of Manchester’s food and drink community: writers, creators, influencers and tastemakers, many carrying their own assumptions about sherry. The purpose of the evening was to overturn them.
Caroline’s Brazilian-inspired menu allowed sherry to show its range in vivid and sometimes unexpected ways. A bright Solera Spritz, made with Manzanilla Solear from Bodegas Barbadillo and lifted with tonic and fresh grapefruit, opened the evening. Fino en Rama Inocente from Bodega Valdespino then met smoked salmon, requeijão, smoked cheese and the fruity sweetness of goiabada.
Amontillado en Rama Don Zoilo from Bodegas Williams & Humbert accompanied pão de queijo with brown butter—a deceptively simple pairing that brought together the wine’s depth and nuttiness with one of Brazil’s most comforting flavours.
For the main course, Oloroso Don José from Bodegas Sánchez Romate stood up beautifully to the soulful richness of feijoada and its Brazilian condiments, served alongside beef skewer, rice and okra, and salada de repolho.
After a playful laranja-lima sorbet with Maria-mole, the Sherry Sunset—Cream sherry from Bodega Fernando de Castilla, served over ice with fresh orange—brought the evening to a suitably theatrical close. It was paired with Sampa’s “Dormouse” chocolate dessert, combining pink-flesh guava, goiabada, blackberry and brownies.
Each pairing revealed a different side of sherry: fresh and invigorating, precise and savoury, complex and nutty, rich and structured, or indulgently sweet. Rather than presenting it as something formal or traditional, the supper placed sherry where it belongs—at the heart of a contemporary food culture driven by creativity, openness and new experiences.
By the end of the evening, glasses had been raised, preconceptions had been dismantled and conversations had begun. That is the idea behind the Sherry Supper Club: bringing curious people together with brilliant chefs and showing just how exciting, versatile and relevant sherry can be.
As Creative Tourist observed, Sampa is a “Manchester-meets-São Paulo success story.” For one memorable night, it also became the meeting point between Brazil, Manchester and the wines of Andalucía.
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