Bodegas Barbadillo of
Sanlucar have announced their activities for World Sherry Day starting on
Sunday, the Day itself. Along with the doors open visits from 10.00 till 15.00,
they have organised a full programme of tastings which start at 11.00 till
13.00.
Juanjo Mesa of the enology department will lead the first
part of the tasting programme with a vertical of Manzanillas. The second part
will be a tasting of Manzanillas and Jerez wines led by another bodega expert,
Rocio Rodriguez of the PR department.
Fedejerez proposes an
end to all bulk wine, hoping all Sherry will leave the bodegas in
bottle. The association, which
represents 90% of the bodegas believes that the moment has come to take a leap
in quality and opt for the bodegas’ own leading brands, the high quality wines
which are not only more profitable, but give Jerez its prestige. They feel it
is time to get away from low grade wines as well as garrafas and bag-in-box
BIB) formats, and to disqualify them from the DO.
In Sanlucar, however, many small bodegas would prefer to
disqualify their Manzanilla in order to continue to sell it to the bar/catering
trade in BIB, a very popular business. But Fedejerez is adamant that only the
glass bottle will assure a profitable future for Sherry, and hopes that this
will be included in the new Sherry Reglamento. This is a rather thorny issue.
According to the president of Fedejerez, Evaristo Babe, the
future is in bottles, which offer all the guarantees of quality, hygiene and
control. He sees no other problems in
supply to the pouring trade, particularly tabancos, with re-fillable bottles.
He feels it is time to turn the page on the times in which anything goes and in
which there has been excess production and rock-bottom prices. It is entirely
logical that the bodegas should seek to improve things – to survive. Now that balance
has been restored to the region, it is felt that alternative packaging, such as
BIB detracts from the value of the product.
Many bodegas already take the matter as already settled, as
it was debated at a plenary at the Consejo over a year ago, when the proposal
to authorise the BIB was rejected by a majority. The majority are in favour of
the bottle and the “maximum level of excellence” inherent in it. While they are
aware that things can’t be fixed overnight, they are also well aware of the
mistakes of the past.
Babe says that Sherry got involved in a spiral of reducing
costs such that everything was to do with price, but the situation now is
different. BIB barely covers the cost of the grapes, which has almost doubled
in the last year, and he says that it is now time for a change of mentality, a
change in the model. Bodegas’ own leading brands, in bottle, he considers, are
synonymous with investment and employment.
This contrasts with the strength of the BOB sector, another
matter which has to be dealt with in order to achieve “maximum excellence”. Surprisingly, there are very few leading brands,
but there need to be, in order to gain critical mass, and anyone who wants to
go their own way does not have to belong to the DO. We should go for quality
and not do what Montilla and Condado de Huelva (other Andaluz fortified wines)
have done by embracing BIB.
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