Sherry
Extract: Sherry by Julian Jeffs
14 June 2021 by Rebecca in Classic Wine Library, Extracts, Sherry, Wine and spirits
Into the glass
Like all wines, sherry’s raison d’être is to give pleasure. And like all great wines it gives pleasure in complex ways appealing to all the senses. As soon as it is poured into a glass it shows its colour and clarity. A lot can be learned simply by looking at it. Then comes its appeal to the nose. The bouquet of a good sherry strikes the nose while it is being poured into the glass, sometimes even from the next room. The nose is a major organ of tasting, receiving the first sensations. For this to happen the wine needs room for the volatile compounds to collect and concentrate above its surface, contained in the space defined by the glass, which should therefore taper in towards the top and be big enough for the wine only to occupy about a third of it. The little thimbles sold as ‘sherry glasses’ with the wine filled to the brim do not give it a chance. Apart from the bouquet ascending to the nose, the colour and viscosity can be appreciated. These features reveal the character of the wine and lay the foundations for the pleasure it can give in the mouth. There is a difference between aroma and bouquet. The aroma is the smell of a young wine, while the bouquet develops with age as the wine matures, giving a complexity that can be immense, subtle and complex.
Many wine lovers begin by being interested in one or other of the great table wines; they are perplexed by the many styles of sherry and sometimes never seek out ones that really satisfy them. It is essential to try all the styles. The final choice depends on the time of day, the weather, and the other wines that are taken with the meal. Above all, it depends on what one happens to like. It is not easy to advise anyone. There is only one hard and fast rule: judge for yourself and drink what you enjoy. No one has the right to tell others what they should drink, but that has never prevented people asking. The only possible answer is that people who drink sherry regularly generally agree about the styles that suit certain occasions, and it is as well to try following their example first. Then by all means be original; your own taste is all that matters. To be dogmatic is a form of ignorance, and often a manifestation of wine snobbery. Other people’s views may act as a guide, but they are only opinions and should be treated as such.
For those who enjoy a glass of wine and a biscuit in the morning, any style of sherry is suitable, though the majority prefer a dry wine when the weather is hot and a sweeter one when it is cold. It is here that the fuller-bodied wines – amontillado, palo cortado and dry oloroso – come into their own. In the sherry country there is a saying that one should have a glass of oloroso mid-morning to prepare the stomach for the serious drinking of fino before lunch.
Very dry sherry has an unaccountable snob appeal, but habitual wine drinkers do generally prefer such sherries as aperitifs. My own preference is certainly for a bone dry aperitif save in the depth of winter, when the sugar in a slightly abocado sherry is very comforting. In choosing an aperitif one must obviously bear in mind the table wine that follows. A very old amontillado would destroy the flavour of a Moselle; it would even overpower many Burgundies. Wine lovers like to arrange a progression of flavours, leading up to a big white wine, like a Burgundy or Rhône, with a light manzanilla or fino sherry; but many white wines, like those from the Saar or Loire valleys, or the north of Spain, are light in themselves and have high acidities so that instead of a progression there is a rather unsatisfactory contrast. Here an amontillado, a palo cortado or a dry oloroso can be better; and sherries such as these with the soup provide just the right degree of contrast when champagne is served as an aperitif. Claret can follow a fino, young amontillado or delicate palo cortado; Burgundy can withstand a somewhat older amontillado or an oloroso; a Rhône wine, a big Spanish red, or a super Tuscan can safely follow an old sherry. Old palo cortados and olorosos, whether dry or sweet, are excellent with cheese, particularly blue and green cheeses, and goats’ or ewes’ milk cheeses such as queso Manchego.
A dessert sherry should generally be more or less sweet, though a dry palo cortado or oloroso can be delicious after lunch on a hot summer’s day. A wine to be drunk at the end of a meal should have plenty of body, and although I have enjoyed an old amontillado after lunch, palo cortado or oloroso is generally more attractive. Earle Welby was undoubtedly right when he wrote that sherry is far better than port after champagne.
Pedro Ximénez had long been used in the sherry country as a blending wine but was seldom drunk by itself, though locally it was thought good for nursing mothers. Then, in the 1990s, shippers began to bottle and sell it. Perhaps they had a surplus, as wines like brown sherry were going out of favour. Pedro Ximénez is slightly viscous, sticky and very sweet, but these qualities give it an appeal of its own. It tastes delicious poured over a vanilla ice-cream and the rest of the bottle can then be drunk with the ice-cream, a food that is usually impossible to match with wine. And when Pedro Ximénez ages it develops real distinction; although still very sweet, its after-taste becomes almost dry, complex and very long.
Sherry is generally at its best with food. In Spain, it is taken with a tapa. The word means a lid, or cover, and is said to be derived from an old Spanish custom of putting a plate with a morsel of food on top of the glass. Bars in Spain compete with one another in providing good tapas, and the choice includes such things as cheese, prawns, fish, small steaks, tomatoes, olives, potato salad, chips, pâté, fried squid, fancy sausages (notably chorizo), egg including cold Spanish omelette, meatballs, salt cod, ham and a multitude of specialities. Fino sherries are particularly good with food. My own favourite working lunch is a large glass of fino with a salad or with more easily portable food such as a slice of quiche or a well-filled sandwich. It even tastes good with an egg mayonnaise sandwich, something which defeats most wines.
While the second edition of this book was in the press I got married and proudly took my wife to a vintage feast in Jerez. Soon after midnight the two of us, walking with a sherry-shipping friend in the feria, began to feel the need for dinner. We were passing by a stand where they were spit-roasting chickens, basted with oil and flavoured with the most delicious herbs. I ordered a chicken and a bottle of fino. ‘A whole bottle, for three?’ Deborah asked, aghast. But she did not bat an eyelid when I ordered the second. It is, after all, very little stronger than many table wines and one drinks more with impunity when well exercised and in the Andalusian air.
Sherry is a white wine, and the general rules for serving white wines apply. A fino tastes better if it is chilled but not frozen and this is especially so in hot weather; wines of greater body need only be slightly cool, for instance at cellar temperature; and dessert sherries are best served on the cool side of room temperature, though cream sherry nowadays is sometimes served ‘on the rocks’ as a refreshing drink. On no account should any sherry be warmed.
Sherris-sack was first drunk from silver vessels – and they usually held a man’s measure. Then, during the seventeenth century, Venetian glass was introduced into England, and it was generally drunk from flute glasses. A wide choice of wine glasses is available today; many of them are aesthetically very beautiful, but few are suitable for drinking wine out of, and the small so-called ‘sherry glasses’ are by far the worst of all. Among the worst are those that narrow towards the middle: so-called Elgin glasses and schooners. The former are said to have been designed by an extraordinarily mean peer who wanted his guests to think they were getting a good measure when they were not. One of the best things about sherry is its deep, penetrating fragrance that prepares the palate for the flavour of the wine; the bouquet of a good sherry is so attractive that one can enjoy it without tasting the wine at all. Sherry needs a big glass with plenty of room for the full fragrance to gather within it. Tulip-shaped wine glasses filled only half-way are very good, but the special tall tasting glasses, known as dock glasses and used in the wine trade, are better still. The ISO glass, now widely available, is a good example. These are from five to seven inches high and gently taper in towards the top; they should only be filled to the height of one inch or two. A smaller version which is good is the copita. But good glasses not only show up the beauty of a wine, they also reveal its faults. There is a saying in Jerez: solo hay dos clases de Jerez, el bueno y el mejor – ‘there are only two kinds of sherry, the good and the better’, but there are a few sad exceptions in the cut-throat competition of today, and most of these find their way to public bars, where small glasses may perhaps not always be out of place.
What happens to sherry after it has been bottled depends very much on its style. A fino is never at its best after more than three months in bottle and this is especially so with wines sold en rama. Light amontillados also deteriorate and coarsen in bottle, but rather more slowly. Strange things can happen when dry sherries are kept for a long time. In my own cellar I laid down some fine palo cortado rather more than thirty years ago. For the first three or four years it improved; then it went through a bad patch that lasted for six or seven years. After that it came out on the other side, showing great age and elegance that improved annually until the wine had about twenty-five years’ cellaring. Then it began to go off.
An unsweetened oloroso remains unharmed for several years. If the wine is sweetened, its behaviour is quite different. Light amontillados do not improve but they last far longer than finos and can safely be kept in bottle for two or three years. The development of a medium-quality amontillado in bottle over a long period of years is extremely speculative. Many years ago I inherited three bottles of an identical, slightly sweetened amontillado that had been in my grandfather’s cellar for twenty years. One had absorbed all its sugar and had become a bone dry, very smooth wine of outstanding character, while the other two were dreadful. A really first-class amontillado, palo cortado or oloroso, if it is initially sweetened, develops in bottle and steadily changes. It gradually consumes its sugar, and becomes remarkably smooth while the bouquet and flavour grow exceptionally. Such wines are said to have ‘bottle age’. Given long enough in the bottle, a dessert oloroso can become absolutely dry, though this may well take fifty or sixty years. I have tasted a sherry that had been in bottle for over a hundred years, and it was truly remarkable. One of the finest dessert sherries I remember was a good oloroso my father bought before the war; it was still very sweet thirty years later, but had developed a remarkably mellow and complex flavour with a remarkable nose. Such wines develop with every year in bottle, and they have long been sought after by wine lovers. They should be kept at the very least ten years if the quality of bottle age is really to be appreciated. Then they are glorious.
Once the bottle has been opened, fino sherry oxidizes and gets coarse very quickly: the more delicate the wine, the more noticeable this is. A natural fino should be drunk within three days of opening the bottle, unless it is kept very cool, for instance in the door of a refrigerator, when it lasts twice as long; anyone who takes longer should buy half-bottles. Alternatively, as soon as a bottle of sherry is opened, half of it can be decanted into a clean half-bottle which, if immediately and tightly corked, preserves it almost as well as if the wine had not been opened at all, as there has been hardly any time in the air for it to become oxidized. Nowadays there are gadgets that help: one of these evacuates the space above the wine, while another fills it with inert nitrogen and carbon dioxide; both reduce oxidation.
The same thing applies to the other styles of sherry provided they are completely dry. Oxidation completely spoils them and since few people could wish to drink these wines very cold, the easiest way of ameliorating it is not available. They should be drunk within a week. The more body or sweetness a wine has, the longer it lasts and, at the opposite end of the scale, a brown sherry can safely be left for a month even in a decanter. Decanters are far less airtight than corked bottles, and sherry tends to deteriorate more quickly if it has been decanted. This does not generally matter, as a good wine seldom gets the chance to last for more than a day or two, and decanters are very decorative, but they are only really useful when the wine has been in bottle for two or three years and has thrown a slight deposit.
Strong wines such as sherry attack their corks, which crumble and leak, utterly spoiling them. This can be avoided if the bottles are stored upright, and this is always done in bodega reference rooms, where the wine is generally stored for three or four years. If it is kept upright for longer, there is the danger that the cork may get too dry and cease from being airtight, though I have never known it happen to a bottle of sherry. It is the reason why table wine bottles are binned horizontally, though. For sherry to be laid down, upright or horizontal, it should be corked with long corks of the first quality, like those used for vintage port. Nowadays metal screw-tops with thin plastic seals inside are rapidly taking over. This reduces the risk of oxidation and works very well, though when they were introduced in the 1980s the plastic was not entirely inert and I have known an amontillado become positively nasty after a couple of years. I would not expect this to happen now.
Sherry, like other wines, should be stored in a dark place, as light catalyzes oxidation. The traditional sherry bottle is made of very dark, almost black, glass and that helps. ‘Market forces’ however are calling for clear bottles. Wine in such a bottle should be kept in a dark place and certainly never exposed to direct sunlight.
There is a dictum of Robert Benchley that, ‘Drinking makes such fools of people, and the people are such fools to begin with, it’s compounding a felony.’ A man who drinks fine wine because he enjoys it will never become a drunkard: wine stops being a pleasure long before it becomes a danger. Taken the right way, it is wholly good. During the Great Plague, only Dr Hedges, of all the London doctors, escaped contagion; he drank a few glasses of sherris-sack every day, and wrote in his memoirs: ‘Such practice not only protected me against contamination, but instilled in me the optimism which my patients so much needed.’ There is a legend that many years ago there lived an archbishop of Seville who so far exceeded the decent complement of years laid down in Holy Writ as to reach the age of 125. He was a man of regular habits and drank a bottle of sherry with his dinner every day, save when he was feeling at all unwell; then he drank two bottles.
In Castile and the north of Spain sherry is given as a tonic to expectant mothers. When George C. Howell, of New York, examined the ages and habits of the sherry shippers in Jerez, he found that 10 per cent were light or very light drinkers, and the other 90 per cent were heavy drinkers; 10 per cent died before the age of seventy, and the other 90 per cent lived longer; 15 per cent lived to be ninety. If a sherry shipper dies aged less than seventy, his colleagues regard it as a case of infant mortality. Henry Swinburne recorded the curious fact that, ‘The earth in the cemeteries of Xeres, has the quality of preserving corpses incorrupted for years and ages.’ Some doubt has been cast upon the accuracy of this observation, but if indeed it was true, I am sure the quality of the earth had nothing to do with it: by the time a Jerezano dies, he is safely pickled by a lifetime of steady drinking.
When a Jerezano opens a bottle of sherry, he sometimes gives it a shake and throws a little on the floor before filling his glass. There is a good reason for this, as it gets rid of the wine that may have been corrupted by contact with the cork. But it is also a ritual – a sacrifice to the earth that gave the wine its being. Then he does the really important thing: he drinks the rest of the bottle. But he bears in mind the rule of St Gildas the Wise: ‘If any monk through drinking too freely gets thick of speech so that he cannot join in the psalmody, he is to be deprived of his supper.’
Extract (edited) from Sherry, Julian Jeffs (Infinite Ideas, 2019)
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The Classic Wine Library – our kind of people
17 May 2017 by Rebecca in Classic Wine Library, Lifestyle, Sherry, Wine and spirits
One of the great things about working in publishing is the conversations you get to have with experts and enthusiasts in a variety of fields. In my time in the world of books I have worked with people writing about medicine, religion, philosophy, self-help and business. But perhaps the most enthusiastic people I have met are the experts in wine with whom I’m involved at the moment.
What is more because their field of expertise lends itself to conviviality some of the conversations we’ve had with authors of books in the Classic Wine Library have taken place over a glass of red or white. It’s not that the authors in those other fields were lacking in social skills but given the choice between meeting an author at the hospital to pore over images of skin diseases or meeting one in a wine bar to talk about the wines of Languedoc, Spain or northern Italy, the decision is pretty easy.
One of our most eminent authors is Julian Jeffs. He is also a generous host and the owner of an impressive wine cellar, some of which Infinite Ideas was privileged to experience over lunch (cooked by his wife) at our first meeting to discuss the most recent edition of his classic book Sherry. And I have encountered several authors who think it quite normal to have a glass of sherry or madeira for elevenses – whereas if I suggested this back at the office (even given that the Infinite Ideas office is a pretty relaxed place) people might start to worry. Apparently having one at eleven is the more sensible of two available alternatives – the other option being to have eleven at one. In any case, inebriation is not the aim here (or so I am led to believe), and any partaking of wine is always accompanied by an evaluation of its merits.
A couple of years ago Infinite Ideas spent a particularly relaxed (by which we don’t mean sozzled) afternoon in the company of Richard Mayson and Julian Jeffs as they discussed the wine trade and wine writing. We were able to sit back and listen to these two experts chat about the subject they know best. One thing that particularly struck me, which I had not considered before, was that writing about wine actually has played an important part in the trade. Once producers realised they and their industry were being written about they had to clean up their acts and practises such as adding sugar to sherry, which were common when Julian began writing on the subject in the 1960s have now disappeared.
Wine writing does continue to influence the trade and help ensure quality; as Julian noted, ‘I think the job is still to keep the standards up and to tell the truth about wine in some detail to serious wine drinkers who want to know it.’ So while Classic Wine Library books will not educate the next generation of heart surgeons, help somebody manage their depression or give them the tools to become the next Bill Gates it’s good to know that they are making a difference to the wine we all enjoy drinking.
Infinite Ideas dropped in on a conversation between Julian Jeffs and Richard Mayson in February 2015. They spoke about changes in the wine world over the last 60 years, especially in the field of fortified wine. You can read the whole conversation here.
Find out more about forthcoming Classic Wine Library books here and order published books at 20% discount here.
The rise in the sherry trend
25 November 2014 by Catherine Holdsworth in Lifestyle, Sherry, Wine and spirits
We’re all very excited to tell you that Sherry, sixth edition by Julian Jeffs, is now available and you can buy it for yourself, to learn more about the fantastic drink, or you can buy it for that special someone who likes nothing better than having a tipple or two before bedtime.
More often than not, sherry is synonymous with your grandmother’s slippers, Christmas trifle and Countdown in the afternoon. But there has been a turn in the tide and what used to be a very old-fashioned drink is now becoming rather trendy among the young drinkers, even described by The Telegraph as ‘hip’.
One reason for this surge in popularity could be the rise in tapas restaurants and bars in Britain. What could be a better accompaniment for a Spanish meal than a Spanish drink?
And advantage of the rise in this trend is that not everyone has bought into it yet. For example, if you want a good quality Sauvingnon Blanc, you could be paying through the nose for it. However, an excellent sherry (as recommended by the experts) can be found in supermarkets for less than £15.
Of course, sherry is unlikely to replace the traditional bottle of red on the table at your dinner party, but how about surprising your guests with a glass of sherry before the meal. It would make a great talking point and introduce others to the great drink.
Vintage is becoming very cool. The recession made upcycling and vintage shopping very popular as well as practical. While we’re not advising drinking the bottle of sherry that has been open in the back of your cupboard since the beginning of the 1990s, perhaps now is the time to take a leaf out of grandma’s book. But perhaps donate her slippers to Oxfam!
Sherry’s literary connections
17 November 2014 by Catherine Holdsworth in Sherry, Wine and spirits
Q: How many bottles are in a butt of sherry?
A: 720
That’s right. Imagine being presented with 720 bottles of sherry. Even the hardiest of drinkers mightbe slightly phased by such a gift. However, that is exactly what you get if you are appointed the British Poet Laureate. Most recently, Carol Ann Duffy, half way through her duty as Poet Laureate, signed a replica of her butt (of sherry) at an exhibition celebrating the tradition.
Nevertheless, as with all British traditions that go back centuries, this has been fraught with scandal and intrigue. According to Julian Jeffs, author of Sherry, the tradition is thought to have started in 1619 when Ben Johnson was presented with a ‘butt of sack’. However, in 1790, Henry James Pye preferred an annual payment of £27 rather than the wine. The butt-giving was not fully restored until 1984, when Ted Hughes was appointed to the position and happily accepted his gift. Seven-hundred-and-twenty bottles, though, is a lot for one person, even a tortured poet, so Hughes gifted a crate to the Queen Mother.
At Infinite Ideas we love books and wine, so what could be better than a book about wine that has literary connections? Julian Jeffs’ book will be available from Thursday (that’s right, in three days’ time). It looks smashing, and is a fascinating read, if we do say so ourselves. If you can’t wait until then, here is a poem about sherry (kind of):
The Infinite Ideas interview with Julian Jeffs
12 November 2014 by Catherine Holdsworth in Sherry, Wine and spirits
Julian Jeffs is the author of Sherry, sixth edition, available on 20th November. We’re all very excited about this and so Julian came along to discuss the sherry wine trade and his thoughts for the future of the drink.
Why isn’t sherry produced anywhere else?
Sherry, like every other wine, is the product of vines and vineyards. The Palomino Fino grapes that produce sherry can be grown elsewhere and are found in various parts of Spain. In other places they produce rather inferior table wines and nothing in the least resembling sherry. The factors enabling these vines to yield sherry are the calcium-rich albariza soil and the climate, a combination unique to the sherry area.
What have been the biggest changes in the production of sherry over the years? Why do you think this is?
In the last sixty years practically everything has changed for two reasons. The first is the enormous increase in the cost of labour and the second is a much more profound knowledge of wine science: of what goes on while the juice of the grapes is being transformed into wine. The increased cost of labour has done away with the old gangs of workmen who used to run the bodegas in a very labour-intensive way. Mechanisation and efficiency became essential if sherry was to survive. And wine science means that diseased and defective wines have practically disappeared while the average quality of the wine has increased correspondingly.
In Sherry you’ve written a lot about the history of the drink, but what do you think lies ahead in the world of cognac; does it face challenges or do you predict a boom?
The history of sherry has been one of boom and bust. This is partly owing to the pendulum of fashion and partly brought about by the shippers who in times of boom go for volume and ship very poor wines at very low prices. This rightly brings them into disrepute. Its future can only lie in its being recognised as one of the world’s great wines, which it undoubtedly is. Another difficulty lies in the absence of advertising. The leading brands, which had to be of above average quality, were widely advertised but now that sherry is no longer profitable this is impossible. The market is being built up again for good quality wines and yes, I think here will be another boom, but the next peak may be many years away.
Do you think global warming has affected the production of sherry?
The only effect global warming has had on sherry so far is the advance the date of the vintage. This year it started on August 11th and ended on September 15th, about a fortnight earlier that it used to. The grapes are picked at the right degree of ripeness and it does not appear to have affected the quality in any way. It will be slightly easier, though, to make sweet wines.
Do you think that technology has generally been a good thing or a bad thing for sherry?
Technology has undoubtedly been a good thing in several different ways. Owing to the scarcity and cost of vineyard labour, without modern methods of cultivation and mechanical harvesting in particular, it is doubtful if the sherry vineyards could continue. In the bodegas extraction of the must from the grapes is now very well controlled so that the highest possible quality is obtained, with oxidation and excessive pressure avoided. The must is then be fermented under carefully controlled conditions and the poor quality or even defective wines that were once only too common have now virtually been abolished. I cannot think of any way in which technology has operated to the detriment of the wines save perhaps for the fact that it enables the shippers to pander to the taste for light coloured and limpid wines with too much taken out of them, leading to a diminution of flavour and character. But that seems to be the public taste.
Sherry is often regarded as an old-fashioned tipple; how would you convince today’s drinkers that it’s worth trying?
By giving them a glass or two to drink and telling them what to look for. I have given tutored tastings for sixth formers at schools and undergraduates at university who have been amazed and delighted when shown what good sherry really tastes like. The lesson that it tastes good with food is also being learned and shown by the success of tapas bars. The intelligent young can enjoy classical wines just as they can classical music.
Sherry-tasting is quite a specialised skill. How did you get into it – were you a natural or did you have to learn?
Some people have more sensitive palates and noses and better memories for flavours than others. Those who are favoured in this way make the best tasters, and there are a very few who do not seem to have these gifts at all, so almost anyone can enjoy the subtleties and beauties of wine. It does not come naturally, though, and has to be taught by suggesting to a young taster the things he or she should look for and to identify the differences between the various wines. I was fortunate in having a father who was a knowledgeable wine lover and who gave me my first lessons. Like most teenagers I was something of a rebel and saw there were two alternatives: I could reject wine, but that did not happen because I soon liked it enormously, or I had to learn more about it than my father. I chose the latter course to his amusement and gratification.
Can you tell us about the worst sherry drink you have ever tasted?
In 1956 I was crossing the Channel in a French ferry. Before lunch I went to the bar and optimistically asked for a glass of sherry. The barman told me he only had ‘French sherry’ so I ordered a glass. I have no idea what it was but it was memorably horrible. About twenty years later I was on holiday in Italy and saw a bottle of an excellent fino behind the bar. The colour looked wrong but I ordered a glass out of curiosity. I gathered it had been there, open, for two or three years and it had become brown. My curiosity was satisfied but again it was horrible.
Who is the greatest character you have met during your long career as a sherry expert? Can you tell us about him/her?
The Sherry country has always been full of characters and happily they still abound. I have met enough to fill a small book. But if I have to select just one it would be Manuel María González-Gordon, Marqués de Bonanza. He should be the subject of a biography not just a paragraph. I got to know him soon after I arrived in Jerez the first time in 1956 when he was head of González-Byass. He was tall, slightly stooping, as tall men often are, good looking, extremely short-sighted and never put on show any sign of his aristocratic birth, wealth or position. He drove about in an old Austin Seven. He was a scholar and a gentleman, friendly to all, young or old, saint or sinner. Drinking sherry with him was an education. To everyone he was Uncle Manolo. As a scholar he knew more about sherry than anyone and wrote the classic book about it. In his old age he laid the foundations for the scientific investigation of sherry that have given rise to its modern enology. Once when I was there the city pulled down its old gaol (which was a pity as it was in a rather beautiful old convent) and built a grand new one. I remarked on this to a friend who said “Yes, and there are only two people inside it: a gipsy who stole a hen and Uncle Manolo trying to help him.” A great friend of the United Kingdom, he was appointed hon. K.B.E. He was born a sickly baby and the doctors despaired of his life but his mother gave him sherry and he survived to die in 1980 aged 93.
Other than sherry what is your favourite drink – not necessarily alcoholic – and why?
I enjoy drinking all sorts of things ranging alcoholically from water to old brandy and taking in tea and coffee. I would miss them all, particularly coffee for breakfast. I enjoy drinking all the classic wines and several obscure ones but apart from sherry perhaps the one I would miss most (though by a very small margin over several others) would be claret.
A brief history of Andalusia (and the wine that is made there)
10 November 2014 by Catherine Holdsworth in Sherry, Wine and spirits
Most of you will know that sherry is made in the famous ‘sherry triangle’ in Spain, in the region of Andalusia. However, you may not know about the history of the region and the events which led to the production of sherry in such a concentrated area.
Of course, the reason sherry is produced there and nowhere else is due to the climate, the soil and the type of grape that produces the popular wine. Yet sherry is intrinsically Spanish and the perfect accompaniment to tapas. But what has happened in this region that gives sherry its character?
Firstly, Andalusia has been colonized by many different cultures, for over 6000 years, including the Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, Jews and Muslims, bringing not only cultural but culinary diversity to this region. Its close proximity to the coast meant that major cities such as Cordoba and Granada were hotspots for migrant traders over the centuries.
Andalusia, known for a time as Al-Andalus due to the Islamic influence, was a key setting for the religious Reformation across Europe, and the infamous Spanish Inquisition. Such change has had an irreversible effect on the demographic of the area as well as the architecture, literature and artwork.
The stoic philosopher Sencea is said to have hailed from this region; clearly it has produced more than just the sherry grape.
However, it is still famous for its popular wine, which is thought to have been introduced to Britain around the time of the Spanish Armada in the 1500s. With such a long and colourful history, this region has produced one of the most distinctive wines in the world.
If you’d like to know more about the history of sherry, Julian Jeffs’ Sherry (sixth edition) will be published on 20th November and copies can be preordered now. A great read, it will make a gratefully received gift for those who are interested in history, wine – or indeed books!