Cooking with sherry vinegar is something you don’t see very often but you often see it in recipes that you’ve been dying to make for a special dinner party. You go to a grocery store and you’re not able to find it. Why? Because it’s special. We’ve come up with 5 substitutes for sherry vinegar to make us feel a little bit better.

If Balsamic vinegar is valued because it is vinegar made from fermented grapes (very much like wine), sherry vinegar is fermented sherry wine that uses the “solera” method of aging. This method of aging means that old and newly aged sherry are blended and let us tell you something, it tastes great.

Sherry vinegar is often seen in fancy recipes. They’re pretty much a high valued kind of vinegar and you have to know how to use it to love it.

If you can’t find sherry at the grocery store or you simply can’t be bothered to find it in the middle of cooking, we’ve come up with a list of alternatives for it. Read on.

1. Rice Wine Vinegar

Rice wine vinegar is the closest in flavor to sherry vinegar. It is sweeter and quite mild. It’s also easier to find because it’s easily available in Asian grocery stores.  If you’re using rice wine vinegar as a substitute for sherry vinegar, you may use 1:1 ratio for the recipe.

2. Red Wine Vinegar

Red wine vinegar is a little bit stronger than sherry vinegar. It’s not exactly as delicate as sherry but if you’re looking for color and a little zing, red wine vinegar is the best substitute for sherry vinegar. You might want to use lesser quantities of it in replacement for sherry vinegar.

3. Champagne Vinegar

Champagne vinegar exits and it’s pretty delicious. It’s a slightly sweeter version of vinegar and it’s a perfect alternative to sherry vinegar. It creates the same experience and they both come from “alcohol”.

4. White Wine Vinegar

White wine vinegar is less harsh in acidity compared to red wine vinegar. If you’re looking for a more subtle vinegar, this would be a good choice. However, it won’t have that same sweetness that rice wine vinegar would give.

5. Lemon Juice

If you’re simply looking for an acidic alternative to sherry vinegar that doesn’t have that vinegar taste, you may replace the sherry vinegar with lemon. It’ll taste completely different but to create the same kind of experience, you may add a little bit of sugar to balance the acidity.