The point is not to say one is more a manzanilla than the other, but to recognize and embrace the entire realm. The wine panel had just such an opportunity at our tasting, which included manzanillas of multiple hues, ages and levels of intensity. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Ashley Santoro, wine director at the Standard in the East Village, and Talia Baiocchi, editor in chief of Punch, an online drinks journal, and author of “Sherry: A Modern Guide to the Wine World’s Best-Kept Secret.”

Twenty years ago, and maybe even 10, a tasting like ours would have been impossible. Back then, sherry was cheaper, more mass-produced and more processed. Rather than aging for long periods in the cellar, it was sold young, heavily filtered, clarified and stabilized. The most distinctive lots were blended with the least to make a blander, more consistent product, like mass-market beer or inexpensive nonvintage Champagne. Consumers were told not to age the wine, but to drink it young and fresh.

Yet no amount of processing could entirely strip manzanilla of its distinctiveness. Its character always shone through, savory, saline flavors mixed up with flowers and herbs. Mainstream manzanillas like Deliciosa can be wonderfully pleasing.

The high-volume model for the sherry industry crashed in the 1990s as a younger generation of Europeans turned away from the drink of their parents and grandparents. As has been true in other genres of wine, like Beaujolais, for example, progress was found in making smaller amounts of more expensive, top-quality wines. Foremost in the vanguard were the partners in Equipo Navazos, Eduardo Ojeda and Jesús Barquín, who acted as négociants, buying small amounts of particularly compelling lots of sherry from producers who might otherwise have blended those lots or done something entirely different with them.

Not only was the Navazos team seeking distinctive sherries, it was also issuing them with minimal processing. If nothing else, these wines helped to ignite a new appreciation of sherry among a younger generation.