22.6.16 Mildew Update; Award for Sherry Cellar-masters

The vineyards closer to Jerez, which make up the majority, appear to have the situation under control. However, as vineyards get closer to the coast where humidity is higher, things get worse. The fungus has been observed in Añina, Las Tablas and Balbaína, but the damage is not extensive, however the area from Trebujena along the coast via Sanlúcar to Chipiona has suffered at least 50% losses and in some cases more. This is the worst mildew outbreak for years.

The heavy rainfall in May which came so late that it wasn’t really expected, led some growers to use less preventive treatment. Then the rain arrived at a critical time for the vine – flowering – and worse still, because of high temperatures, the humidity was such that the mildew spread virulently. It has thus affected not just the leaves and berries, but the plant stems as well in some cases, which augurs badly for next year’s harvest, and work is underway to minimise this. The Junta is encouraging those growers who do not have insurance to get it.

It has not been all bad. Last year was a very dry one, and the heavy rain has at least topped up underground water reserves. This could lead to higher yields which could mitigate – at least to some extent – the losses to mildew, but for the moment the result of the 2016 harvest is anyone’s guess.

On Monday in Madrid Spain’s foremost gastronomic website (gastroactitud.com) held its first award ceremony, I Premios Gastroactitud Compromiso con la Tierra, to reward the usually unknown or little-known people who work hard to produce the best food and drink. A long list of producers who work closely with the land won awards, but there was a special award for the capataces of Jerez in recognition of them all, past and present, and their amazing skills.

Pepe receives the award from chef Andoni Luis Aduriz of Restaurante Mugaritz

Pepe Blandino of Bodegas Tradición accepted the award on their behalf. He has spent 53 years in the Sherry bodegas, most of them at Domecq. His father was an arrumbador, his grandfather a cooper and his son is a capataz. Pepe is living proof of the tradition of passing on skills down through the family. He said “It is a great honour to receive this recognition of the work we do in the bodegas. Personally, I am very proud to receive it on behalf of my colleagues.”

Amontillado Fossi 17.5%, Primitivo Collantes

Appearance

Bright amber tinted gold, legs.

Nose

Light yet elegant, complex and attractive, still with dry and slightly bitter notes of flor and a touch of salinity yet with delicate lightly toasted bread, hazelnut and almond and a faint background sweetness reminiscent of turrón which balances it up perfectly. Very much an Amontillado Fino, and a good one - of which there are not enough around.

Palate

Fairly crisp thanks to its Fino origins, but the sweeter, nuttier element soon comes through balancing perfectly with the nicely judged acidity giving a vivatious wine with good length which is delightful on its own and perfect for food.

Comments

This is a lovely wine with about 5 years under flor and a further 10 ageing oxidatively. It seems younger than that but all the more delicious for it, and it is a shame wines such as this must be labelled either as Amontillado or Fino, it is such an attractive style. However the label in the picture below uses the term "Amontillado Fino" but the bottle I am tasting calls itself "Amontillado" an old picture on the firm's website perhaps. The wine might come from Chiclana, and cannot therefore be labelled as Sherry, but is the equal of many which can - especially at the price. The albariza soils and the skilled hand of Ramiro Ibáñez as consultant oenologist might have something to do with it.

Price

8.00 euros

The Palomino Grape

There is probably no other grape which is so neutral and yet which is capable of producing such a majestic wine as Sherry. Perhaps it is precisely that neutrality which provides the blank canvas on which the brushstrokes of soil, climate, yeast and oxidation can complete the masterpiece.

Palomino is by far the most important Sherry grape, accounting for over 95% of vine plantings in the Marco de Jerez. As a plant it offers moderate vigour, good yields with large bunches of thin-skinned spherical grapes and moderate drought resistance, but is sensitive to termites and berry moth as well as cryptogamic attacks such as mildew. It is also well adapted to chalky soils and has good disease resistance. It is suitable for both the traditional vara y pulgar and the more modern Guyot training on wires, ideal for mechanical harvesting. As a wine it is light and pale with low acidity, moderate alcohol, usually around 12 degrees, and is slightly fruity with gentle herbaceous aromas.

Bunches of Palomino ready for harvest

There are two principal clones: Palomino de Jerez and Palomino Fino which originated in Sanlucar. The latter is preferred for its lower acidity, better flowering, yield and reliability, and has thus almost completely replaced the former. Palomino itself has all but completely replaced the many other varieties which once grew here. It has a marvellous capacity to convey terroir notes such as saltiness or minerality to the wine, and its low acidity is compensated for by bitter notes from flor or volatile acidity in older wines. In order to resist Phylloxera, all the vines are grafted, and the preferred American rootstocks are crossings of V. Riparia and V. Berlandieri which can tolerate soils high in calcium such as Richter 161-49.

Palomino in its spiritual home: albariza

The name Palomino originated with Fernán Yáñez Palomino, one of the knights who helped Alfonso X defeat the Moors in the XIII century, and who stayed on in the area growing vines to which he gave his name. Centuries later his descendants founded the famous bodega Palomino & Vergara. According to an old saying a beloved child has many names, and Palomino is evidently much loved as the following are only some: Listán, Orgazuela (sometimes Horgazuela), Albán, Palomino de Chipiona, Temprana and Palomino del Pinchito – and these only in the Marco de Jerez. The grape also grows in the Canary Islands and Castilla y León, but 95% of it is to be found in Jerez.

Palomino ready for the press

So here’s to Palomino, without which we would be in the unthinkable position of having no Finos, Manzanillas, Amontillados, Palos Cortados or Olorosos, not to mention some of the outstanding table wines now produced in the area.

Harveys Fine Old Amontillado VORS 19%, Harveys

Appearance

Brigt amber with coppery highlights to a trace of green at the rim, legs.

Nose

Quite intense yet very refined and very pure Amontillado with lots of nuts, toasted notes from the oak as well as aromas of the wood itself. The nose really grows and the wine is old enough for all its complexities to have harmonised into a bouquet. Very fine.

Palate

Fuller-bodied than the colour would suggest, it is good and dry but there is enough glycerine to round it off. For its age the wine is not particularly tannic, but it is elegant. A serious wine, with delicious and complex oak and nut flavours and a hint of volatile acidity which linger on the palate for ages.

Comments

Winner of the 2016 International Wine Challenge Champion's Trophy and best wine in the show, this excellent wine comes from Macharnudo grapes and is aged in a 1904 solera nurtured by oenologist Manuel José Valcárcel. It is great to see Harveys better Sherries out there as their VORS are superb. It is not all Bristol Cream! Let's hope Fundador's new owners make the most of the Sherries.

Price

Around £ 30 per 50 cl bottle

Manzanilla Solear en rama Primavera 2016 15%, Barbadillo

Appearance

Deepish brassy straw with golden highlights, legs.

Nose

Pronounced deep saline dry scrub and dried flowers from the flor with notes of brine and dough all beautifully balanced with the flor bitterness, a trace of almond and perhaps a trace of wax. A really classic "punzante" (pungent) Manzanilla nose with class.

Palate

Full, open, dry and very tasty. It has a gentle tang of acidity which drives the yeasty, bitter, briny - almost salty - flavour which is followed by trace oxidation and cabezuela giving real depth and complexity and terrific length. 

Comments

This is a delicious wine right now and I can't wait to taste it again in a year or two's time. It was bottled in March 2016 and Montse Molina, the oenologist, said "it is a very powerful wine with great aromatic complexity and pronounced yeast and saline notes, while on the palate it is full with a silky start which develops in bitterness and has great length. The wine was selected from the bodega El Potro where the intermediate soleras are stored, between Manzanilla Solear and Amontillado Principe". Only 2,500 half bottles were filled. The winter 15/16 was cold giving a solid but very flavourful, classic wine of about 9 years of age: Manzanilla Pasada.

Price
7.50 euros per half bottle from Licores Corredera

Sherry’s Influence on Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s Influence on Sherry

In the latest in Williams & Humbert’s Ciclo de Conferencias held at the bodega, and on the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, local academic and all round Jerezano, José Luis Jiménez gave an account of “Sherry in Shakespeare’s Day”, introduced by bodega director, Jesús Medina.

Sherry makes the mind wise, lively and inventive, and the heart daring. These are, among others, the effects a good jug of Sherry had on Shakespeare who, with good reason is considered to be the wine’s first publicist. He praised its goodness as much in his works –mentioning it more than once in no fewer than eight of them – as in his revelries when he drank it with his friends in the taverns of London. The Boar’s Head or the Mermaid bore witness to the lively get-togethers of the writer with his contemporaries like Christopher Marlowe and Ben Johnson who also extolled the virtues of Sherry.

Jose Luis Jimenez (R) and Jesus Medina

There can be no doubting Shakespeare’s contribution to the promotion of the wine of Jerez, and the city has dedicated a street name to him and a monument, at which every year there is homage paid to the man who did more to promote Sherry than anyone.

The desire to analyse the influence of Sherry on English society since the end of the Middle-Ages is what brought José Luis Jiménez to the subject in hand and he availed the audience of his research, bringing documents conserved in the Municipal Library of Jerez. Among legal protocols from the XV and XVI centuries are commercial transactions for the export of Sherry to places like Plymouth and Bristol in England or Galway in Ireland, showing that there were already British intermediaries based in Jerez. Then there was Sir Francis Drake’s raid on Cádiz by which he supplied the English taverns with 2,900 butts of stolen Sherry.

It is apt for the lecture to take place at Williams & Humbert, a firm founded in 1877 by two Englishmen and with two excellent brands of Sherry which pay homage to Shakespeare: “A Winter’s Tale” and “As You Like It”. The bodega was keen to pay this homage in a year which saw the 400^th anniversary of the death of not only Shakespeare but also of Spain’s greatest writer, Miguel de Cervantes, author of the wonderful “Don Quijote”. As Jesús Medina pointed out, the English influence is firmly rooted in the way of life in Jerez.

18.6.16 Scotland’s First Sherry Bar!

At last Scotland has its first Sherry bar. Goya 23 is located in central Edinburgh and run by Roberto Rodrigo Bonafonte, a native of Zaragoza who has willingly become a #SherryLover. He imports all sorts of delicious Spanish fine foods and wines, and is gaining a reputation for his range of Sherries which can be enjoyed by the glass with food or bought by the bottle. He also has draught Delgado Zuleta Sherry from the barrel and offers sell-out tastings often led by experts. Roberto never sits still; he is actively searching out more Sherries to give the range more depth and excitement. So if you are in Edinburgh rush round to Goya 23, 30 North West Circus Place in Stockbridge for a tapa and a glass of proper Sherry. www.goya23.co.uk