Bodegas: FW Cosens & Co.

Frederick William Cosens was born in Sussex in 1819, the son of an important farmer near Chichester. His father died when he was only 13, and his family moved to London to join relatives there. After studying in Scotland, he began work in the Sherry trade aged 17, and worked with the firms of Pinto Perez & Co. and Widow Victoria & Sons of El Puerto de Santa Maria. In 1845 he married Rosa Frances Collins with whom he had four sons and two daughters. In 1848 he ceased dealing with the Spanish firms and decided to create one of his own.

FW Cosens (Foto Jerez Siempre)

Jose Eduardo Ivison y Viale decided to leave his family Sherry firm, RC Ivison, to his siblings, and became manager in Jerez for FW Cosens, still based in London. This, in effect, established a base for Cosens in Jerez in about 1848, at the Calle Santo Domingo, and several large bodegas were soon acquired, 4 in El Puerto, and 3 in Jerez. They had a major export business, especially to Glasgow.

The firm prospered, and he made a great deal of money, and spent a good deal of it altruistically: restoration of churches, charity donations, and notably he was a member of the fundraising committee in London to help with the Cholera outbreak in Jerez. Cosens even wrote a book in 1866 about Sherry, called Sherryana, illustrated by Edwin Linley Sambourne, but it is now out of print. He also collected Spanish and Italian paintings and drawings, which fetched a high price at Sotheby's in 1890, a year after his death.

In 1862 FW Cosens entered into a partnership with established London based Port shipper, John da Silva, and the Oporto arm of the business became Da Silva & Cosens, later becoming Dow's Port, {See separate post on the Port}, now part of the Symington Group, and a top shipper. He also bought the firm of Ignacio Fernandez de Castro in 1867.

According to Vizetelly in 1875, the principal bodega had a courtyard planted with flower beds, mulberry, laurel, orange and cypress   trees. There were piles of barrels everywhere and oak staves, a cooperage in lovely surroundings. Here they kept Manzanillas and Finos. {Interestingly, Manzanillas seem to have been stored in either Jerez or El Puerto}.

Cosens were renowned for their blends, and were the second biggest shippers at this time. The bodegas were well equipped, being one of the few who possessed a crane to lift butts into position. They had a steaming apparatus for seasoning casks which would steam 125 casks at a time for the 18 hours it took. This process was deemed to “bed in” new casks and test for leaks, and seasoning with wine was no longer thought necessary.

Vizetelly quotes the makeup of one blend:

Amontillado Pasado 1820………………....................7 arrobas       (Very old, even in 1875)

Double Palma (Amontillado type) 1869…………..10 arrobas       ((Amontillado-Fino)

Single Palma (Fino)………………………………………..12.5 arrobas

Pedro Jimenez (top quality vino dulce)……………0.5 arrobas

Sounds delicious, and not very sweet.

{Arrobas are liquid measures of about 16 litres, and in every blend the number of arrobas of each component will total 30 – the equivalent of 600 litres, the capacity of a bodega butt.}   

Blending at Cosens 1870s, from Vizetelly

Cosens had become, from 1861, the leading exporter of Sherry from the port of Guadalete with 2045 butts, and in the same year they exported 2236 from Jerez. They were associated with other firms; Juan de Dios Lasanta e Hijos in Cadiz, and Larios Hermanos of Gibraltar. This set-up, trying to appeal both to the Spanish and British markets was fragile, especially as the English directors were rarely seen in Spain. On the death of FW Cosens in 1889, his share of the company was shared by his two sons, Frederick and Francis, but they preferred to conduct their affairs in London, at precisely the inauspicious time when the UK market was opened up to other wines and taxes were increased.

The firm was taken over by one of the sons of Jose Eduardo Ivison, Jose Enrique Ivison O’Neale, who being the sole owner of the old company FW Cosens, renamed it JE Ivison O’Neale in the late 1920s.

{FG and FW Cosens are one and the same: the G stands for Guillermo, Spanish for William.}