The president of the
Consejo Regulador took advantage of his discourse at this week’s summer course at the International University of
Andalucía in La Rábida (Huelva) to ask people to think again about Sherry and
leave behind the stigma of it being a wine for drinking in bars or an aperitif.
He has promoted Sherry as a multi-faceted wine which should be treated as such
and not just seen as an aperitif, and it should be drunk from a wine glass, not
a tasting glass.
He said that Sherry has a great affinity with
gastronomy and is the perfect match for typical Andalusian dishes such as
gazpacho, shellfish or white fish. He also regretted that there are wines from
the Sherry DO which are hardly known or consumed in Spain yet in other
countries like Britain and Holland they are widely consumed; these are the
blended wines Pale Cream, Medium and Cream.
To restore the value of this great wine he
stressed the importance of demonstrating that it has as much diversity as there
are vineyards in the DO, giving it an enormous range of nuances. He also
stressed the role of the Consejo in promoting Sherry, boosting education of
sommeliers, ensuring Sherry appears more on restaurant wine lists, something
which could be financed by selling the wines at the price they deserve and not
selling them too cheaply.
Before his discourse, Beltrán outlined to his
audience the different types of Sherry: the dry palomino wines Fino,
Manzanilla, Amontillado, Palo Cortado and Oloroso, the sweet wines made from
Moscatel or Pedro Ximénez and the blends thereof. He explained the climatic and
quality factors which affect each Sherry harvest and the unusual ageing process
in American oak butts in cathedral like bodegas with high rooves and grit
floors which keep a steady temperature of 20 degrees.
Also present was one of the great Sherry
figures: Pilar Pla, who at 90 years of age recalled how difficult it was for
her to run her bodega El Maestro Sierra in a world dominated by men, as it was then.
She had to prove that by hard work and considerable tenacity she had what it
took before they would accept and support her. She said that her bodega owed
its success to her team of employees and that she had no intention of retiring
and would continue running it as it is she who keeps it alive.
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