Travel Stories >> Spain >> Jerez

JEREZ...City of Sherries

Jerez de la Frontera, located in the Andalucian province of Cadiz, is best known for its sherries and brandies. If you’ve been to Spain in the last 5 years you’ve seen a famous advertisement for the wines, sherries, and brandies of the Bodegas "Osborne". These are the only billboards permitted throughout the Spanish countrysides and are simple: enormous (4-story high), black, "cut-out" bulls. They are magnificent; no word, no color, and from a distance you could be fooled by this optical illusion, "Look Ma, a real bull out there on the horizon"!! They have become so popular that you can find them in tourist junk shops - that image on T-shirts, the form as refrigerator magnets, wall tiles, trivets, you-name-it.

Since we didn’t know much about sherry, other than that Harvey’s Bristol Cream was certainly VERY yummy after a good meal, we decided to tour a bodega. Which bodega? Well, Harvey’s seemed like the obvious choice! We called ahead for reservations and the next day hopped on the train to Jerez from El Puerto. We were met at the gate by Marta who had us wait a little while for the 16 Brits who were running late but would be joining us momentarily. We paid our $2.35 to enter the bodegas, hear the stories, and taste the wines. What a deal!

Jerez or "Sherry" is what the Spaniards call a geographical "Denomination of Origin". Regardless of what the wine is (a sherry, brandy, or red or white wine), whenever you buy a Spanish wine it should ALWAYS say the words, "Denominacion de Origin" after the name of the grape or wine on the label). Like all the wines of Spain, these are rigorously protected and (quality) controlled by the government’s Regulatory Council (Consejo Regulador). This Consejo defines the sherry vineyards, the production zones, registers the Bodegas, in fact, supervises and controls the entire sherry making process from the classification and maturation of the wines, right through the bottling and authorization of the numbered seals (precintos) on each bottle.

We got a small taste of the history of the region and of the winemaking; beginning, of course, with the Phoenicians (everything in Spanish starts with the Greeks or the Romans). Apparently the Phoenicians brought the first vines to the region, and they were cultivated for centuries by the Romans, Arabs, and Catholics. King Alfonso X ("the Wise") spurred the growth of the industry in the 15th century when the people of Jerez first began to export their wines. It was in the 1700s when the British merchants, looking for alternatives to French wines began to export it in earnest. Many of the 82 companies engaged today in the production and export of sherry (to over 110 countries!) are of British origin with names like, John Harvey’s, Osborne, Williams and Humbert, Ltd., Croft, and Terry. Harvey’s named their cream sherry, "Bristol" cream because for generations its distribution was based in Bristol, UK.

All of the Spaniah sherry comes from a tiny triangular shaped region that exists between Jerez, El Puerto de Santa Maria (where we live) and a small coastal town called Sanlucar de Barrameda. The combination of the white chalky soils (called "Albariza" soil) and climate (295 days of sunshine per annum) of this small area is unlike any other in the world. Marta tells us that such care is taken in the cultivation of the vines that most of the work is done by hand with hatchets, scissors, knives, and other farm tools.

The harvest takes place in September every year and is also done by hand. Although the commercial machinery has replaced the old grape-treading troughs, we are told that the old troughs are still used during the grape harvest festival (called the "Vendimia") on the steps of the Jerez Cathedral. It was fun to walk through the museum and see the old equipment (including a pair of old shoes with scores of nails in the soles - makes me think of that "I Love Lucy" episode...).

The grape is then transferred to the American oak casks in the cool, dark bodegas where it begins to age. After fermentation the wine sits until the end of the winter when a formal classification process of all the wines takes place. The bodegas are long tall warehouses with no real windows and a cool packed sandy floor. Stacked 3-5 rows high, the 500 liter casks sit like waiting soldiers perched on each other like the "O"s in a tic-tac-toe game. The aging and fermentation process is a fascinating one, and is specific to this type of wine. The casks are never filled to capacity and the opening at the top of each is only loosely corked so as to allow air to contact the liquid. This permits what is called, "aerobic maturation", and only sherry and brandy are aged this way. Enter these bodegas and the active smell of the aging wines will carry you off almost as high as the fresh jasmine flowers found crawling up the outside walls.

There are three types of sherries: fino, amontillado, and oloroso. Try to remember them in this order. The cream sherries are a blend of the oloroso and a sweet wine made from the "Pedro Ximenez" grapes. There is also a very special fino called, "manzanilla" which comes only from Sanlucar on the coast. The manzanilla is special because in the maturation process, the wine has access to the salt-air of the seaside and as a result is very pale, dry, slightly acidic, and has just a hint of the saltiness it absorbs naturally during the aging.

The process of maturation for the finos (and manzanillas) and the amontillados involves a type of yeast called "flor" (flower). These microorganisms live on the surface of the wine like a veil (called a ‘velo’). The typical maturation process is called the "Solera system." The word ‘Solera’ comes from the root word ‘suelo’ (which means "floor" in English), because the oldest wines are in the casks at the floor level. In a typical ‘crianza’ or nursery system like the one we are shown, the casks sit on top of each other to form horizontal rows or escalas ("steps" or "scales" in English). From the casks in the solera (the lowest row), a part of the wine is removed (to be bottled) and each row of casks are replenished with wine from the row of casks (or escala) immediately above it, continuing up the line.. the top row being replenished from the newest harvests.

The fino soleras are used to make the more amber-colored, heavier-bodied amontillado wines - which are actually older finos. Like any wines, sherries and brandies also come in ‘reserve’ and ‘gran reserve’.. although no one really knows how old the base wine is in the solera row of many bodega houses - some estimate that those casks must hold drops of wine as much as a century old. If someone tries to sell you a sherry that is a "good year", beware!!

The oloroso wines are the sherries matured without the ‘flor’. They are also the wines with the highest alcohol content (between 18°-20°) and are fortified with alcohol rather than fermented with the ‘flor’. The olorosos are described as "a dark, golden wine, soft and mellow with a full-bodied nutty aroma, either dry or only very slightly sweet.."

Marta tells us that to make the "cream" sherries, most houses mix the oloroso wines with a sweetener, a syrup (which, she is disgusted to tell us, they are allowed to do). Harvey’s makes their cream sherry by mixing fino, amontillado, oloroso, and the Pedro Ximenez sweet wines - no syrups! And since we’ve had our tour, and have tried other cream sherries - we can both vouch for the fact that the olorosos have the most alcohol, and that no one’s cream sherries taste as good as Harvey’s do!

The sweet wines are made from the Pedro Ximenez grapes which, after harvest, are left to dry or cure for 15-20 days on straw mats in the sunshine. The cream sherries which are produced with this mix of wines is immensely popular in the export markets, and Marta tells us that Harvey’s exports an amazing amount of Bristol Cream to the United States. Here, however, where the local market is pretty competitive - we have found it impossible to find Harvey's products. Nothing in the bars nor in the liquor stores, the overseas markets make so much more sense for them.

The sherry bodegas all have pamphlets explaining in great details what kinds of foods should be eaten with which sherries. We think of sherry and we think of after dinner - but most of these finos - served cold - go well with fruit, nuts, and the varied Spanish appetizers we call "tapas". In general, the finos and amontillados should be drunk as cold as possible, and after our tour, we were even served the Bristol Cream over a couple of ice cubes with a slice of orange in the glass. Magnificent!

These wines are not like the red, white, or rose wines that the average Joe is accustomed to drinking. They are certainly an acquired taste. They are described as dry, generally, but even the sweeter wines are a harder taste for someone with an uneducated palate like mine. We were introduced to some nice finos last week by a bar manager friend of ours. Joaquin took a couple of hours one afternoon helping us to better appreciate the wines (sherries and brandies) of this region. It wouldn’t make much sense to drink a fino in the north, Rioja country, just like it’s hard to find a great Ribera del Duero (red wine of the Valladolid region) here in the south. So when in Rome…

One final note. If you like good brandies, then look into the Spanish brandies. Roger has found an old "gran reserva" brandy called, "Fernando de Castilla" which he swears approaches ambrosia. Maybe our next trip should be to the bodegas of Osborne (the bull!) where they make world class brandies!

Copyright © 1999 by Rachel Peterson

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