Bespoke Sherry & Tapas Bar

When you are next in El Puerto de Santa María, make sure you pay a visit to Bespoke Tapas Bar. It is quite unique and the quality is excellent. Carmen Gutiérrez Pou came up with the idea about a year ago.  She is the daughter of Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Colosía, owner of the classic bodega of that name, only a couple of hundred metres along the street. Almost everything is made from old recycled pallets and Sherry paraphernalia and painted by hand in bold colours giving an incredibly bright friendly atmosphere, and the staff are every bit as friendly.

Naturally they promote Gutiérrez Colosía Sherry, which is served in proper, larger, glasses, but they offer many other wines, mostly local ones as well as other local products including locally produced beer. The food is delicious and beautifully presented while a range of Sherry cocktails is available as well as delightful Arabic cakes. The establishment is run by Jerezano Claudio de Diego and I highly recommend it.

Address: Avenida Bajamar, 36, El Puerto de Santa María

Telephone: (+34) 956 106 412

Website: www.bespokepuerto.com

Bodegas: Campbell & Co.

Charles Sutton Campbell was born in Edmonton, London, in 1805. He was a partner in a merchant business which ran plantations in Jamaica, but he hated the slavery system and moved to El Puerto de Santa María to try the Sherry trade instead where he set up in business as a wine producer and wholesaler with a partner, Mr. BR Hodges under the name Campbell & Hodges. The partnership was dissolved in 1843 and he traded thenceforth and successfully as Campbell & Co.

In 1834 he married María Luisa Walsh Lynch in El Puerto and she bore him five children but died only nine years later, aged only 40. Campbell bought three small sloping parcels of vineyard from Juana Lynch, Francisco Martínez and María-Dolores Vaca in the Pago Balbaina near El Puerto between 1844 and 1850. He then unified them along with the casa de viña under the name of his late wife. Here the wine was made for subsequent transportation to the bodega.

This was a smart edifice in the Campo de Guia area of the city with 2,500 square metres. It had five aisles and a patio with a well where the coopers worked. Behind the building was a pretty orchard called Santa Susana, with a little house, a well and a pond. It is still standing and situated at the corner of Calle Valdés and Calle San Bartolomé.

Campbell was British Vice Consul in El Puerto between 1834 and 1883 and lived in a lovely house in the Calle Larga. Queen Isabel II and her cortege would visit the house in 1862. In 1849 at Woolwich, Campbell married Margaret Murray, fifteen years his junior, with whom he had six more children, however on his death it would be his son by his first marriage, Juan Campbell Walsh (b 1840), who would take over the business. The business was presumably sold to Osborne, but the bodega has lain empty in recent years. Plans were lodged at the Ayuntamiento to develop the site into a commercial complex, but so far nothing has happened.

Although Campbell had married the Catholic María Luisa in a Catholic ceremony, he was actually a protestant, and as he grew older he decided to establish a British (protestant) cemetery and bought land from El Puerto council at Palmar de la Victoria. It was a walled area with trees and gardens, and here Campbell was laid to rest in 1885. But over time, and as the British community in El Puerto shrank, it fell into disrepair and is now the site of a shopping mall. 

1.5.15 The Biggest Osborne Bull in History

The Feria de la Primavera in El Puerto de Santa María will be presided over from the 6^th of May by a 20 metre high Osborne Bull fitted with 20,000 high-tech LED lights. This monumental sight will greet people arriving at the feria, leaving them impressed by its sheer size. Like last year, Osborne has also commissioned special labelling designed by Martín Satí for 2015 for their classic Fino Quinta.

The mayor of El Puerto, Alfonso Candón, and Tomás Osborne have signed an agreement giving the green light to the siting of the immense bull at the entrance to the feria and fiestas del vino Fino. Nobody could possibly be left unimpressed.

La Casa de las Cadenas

A beautiful old mansion in El Puerto de Santa María is to be at least partly re-built. The Casa Vizarrón, known locally as the “Casa de las Cadenas”, was built by Juan de Vizarrón Araníbar, a Knight of the Order of Alcántara in the late XVII century. He was a merchant supplying goods which naturally included Sherry to the new empire in South America, and used the house both as a home and base for his business activities with warehousing at the back.

 Such merchants were known as Cargadores de Indias” and their houses were splendidly appointed demonstrating the fortunes they were earning. Between 1723 and 1733, at the time when King Felipe V and Isabel Farnesio held court in Sevilla, they stayed at this house when in El Puerto, and in gratitude appointed Juan Antonio Vizarrón Eguiarreta Archbishop of México and later Viceroy of Nueva España. That the King stayed here is commemorated by iron chains (cadenas) in the patio which demonstrate a link to royalty, hence the nickname of the house.

The (once) impressive balconied entrance on Plaza del Polvorista (foto:lavozdigital)

The imposing façade of Las Cadenas is on the Plaza del Polvorista while the side is on Calle Cadenas which leads to the waterfront. There is lovely internal patio with a balcony supported by white marble columns between which are suspended the famous chains.

Unfortunately, and like many such “casas palacios”, it fell into disuse and then disrepair. Despite a protection order prohibiting the building’s modification issued by the Junta de Andalucía, the same as that which covers the entire historic town centre, the Jerez city architect saw fit, in exchange for €800,000, to allow demolition of the old warehouses for the creation of housing by a speculative builder in 2004.

The patio with the chains in better days (foto:wikipedia)

The police mounted  “Operation Tequila” to root out licences given illegally for building works on forbidden sites, and now a court has sentenced the five men involved; the builder and his son; the city architect, the councillor for urban matters and the mayor at the time to 18 months jail, fines and lengthy prohibition from holding public office. The city architect is still under investigation, and the builders must re-build at least what they demolished.

This result is to be applauded. The level of corruption to do with licensing illegal building has been monumental, and many a mayor and town councillor in Spain is or was in jail. There was a joke about it: “Which town has the most mayors?” “Alhaurín (Málaga), because that’s where the jail is.” The Junta is absolutely right, these people are not only destroying historic patrimony but also hurting the valuable tourist industry.

                                                                                                                                         

Bodegas: Fernando A de Terry

The Terry family came originally from Cork in the south of Ireland, and like many at the time, left the financial, religious and political troubles in their homeland for a better life. They were known as the "Wild Geese". After Oliver Cromwell confiscated their Irish estates, William Terry, one of the “Wild Geese” and his family went to France, leaving in 1693 thence via Genoa to Cadiz, and settled there in 1774, working in shipping, as he had done in Italy. Some members of the large - huge - Terry family went to Peru, Venezuela and Cuba, becoming immensely rich from, among other things, sugar plantations. (Tomas Terry y Adan was known as the Cuban Croesus!)

William Terry’s descendants would involve themselves in the wine trade, and Fernando de Terry y Brucet, who was born in Cadiz in 1783, had stocks of maturing wine by 1816 in both Cadiz and El Puerto de Santa Maria, acting as an almacenista. In 1835 Fernando de Terry y Carrera established the firm, but it encountered difficulties and was re-financed and re-established in 1865, forming the company we know now, when he expanded the business into making and shipping wines and brandies. He was succeeded by Fernando C Terry del Cuvillo, who in 1948 bought for the Terry bodegas the Yeguada (stud) del Hierro del Bocado, the most importand breeding stock of Cartujano horses.

His relation, Santiago Terry was involved with the defence of Cadiz from Napoleon during the Peninsular War. He organised battalions of volunteers, as well as being one of the writers of the famous 1812 Constitucion de Cadiz (known affectionately as “la Pepa”) and there is a Cadiz street (formerly Calle Gamonales, where he was born) named after him.

The Terry bodegas in the Calle Santisima Trinidad were among the most beautiful in the town, built around a patio with ancient olive trees with carved wood interiors in the offices. In the "sacristia" where the oldest wines were kept, there, on the wall, the head of a bull killed by Mazzantini, the only Italian to have ever had success in the bullring. In these bodegas was aged the wine made in their vinification plant on the outskirts of town. Nearby is the Finca San Jose del Pedroso, the stud for the famous Terry horses, the white pure bred Cartujanos, which are stabled in the old bodegas of John William Burdon. The bodegas, El Carmen, La Tribuna, La Maruja have gardens, patios and even a museum of XIX century carriages, evoking the past.

Terry had a good reputation for looking after their employees, and was known as the “social bodega”. They paid women of all ages to “knit” the nets for their Centenario brandy bottles, which brought in a little extra income to hard-pressed families. The yellow net was created with simple tools; a special looped needle, a headless nail and a train ticket!  It was introduced in 1905, with different coloured nets for different brandies.

Another Terry firm, Carlos y Javier de Terry, known nowadays as Bodegas 501 to avoid confusion, also in El Puerto de Santa Maria, was established by other members of the Terry family in the late XIX century on soleras from the XVIII century purchased from Manuel Moreno de Mora. (See separate  post).

The last Terry in the family business was Fernando de Terry Merello (1935-2009), Santiago’s great grandson, and son of Fernando C de Terry del Cuvillo, mayor of El Puerto de Santa Maria 1941-3. His wife was the daughter of the Conde de Osborne (of bodegas Osborne) Fernando was in charge of the bodegas until 1981, when the business was sold.

During the 1970’s the domestic brandy boom led many bodegas to invest large (borrowed) sums to boost capacity. Terry invested 2,000 million pesetas, half of which was spent on the vinification plant. The world oil crisis of 1974, however, spoiled the party. Borrowing suddenly became much more expensive, and sales were starting to slide. Using the Finca San Jose del Pedroso as collateral, the Terrys raised another 400 million pesetas, but even this did not stem the costs of borrowing and trading losses, and the bodega was sold to two Catalan investment firms, SERVAY (90%) and INPISA-2 (10%) on 11^th August 1981.

There was speculation at the time that RUMASA may have been behind the purchase, leading Domecq, Gonzalez Byass and Osborne to form a consortium to defend themselves from the “Little Bee” (the trademark of RUMASA). They were right, it was a front for RUMASA, who got Terry for the ridiculously low price of 250 million pesetas, which was partly paid with credit RUMASA received from the Banco Condal – which it owned.

Soon, however, RUMASA itself collapsed, its component companies being taken over by the Spanish Government, who having gone through the books with a fine-tooth comb, sold the companies off.  In 1985 Terry was bought by Harveys of Bristol, part of Allied Lyons, who agreed to look after the stud.  Allied then took over Domecq in 1994 forming Allied Domecq, which was bought by Pernod Ricard in 2005 and subsequently dismembered. Terry was sold to Beam Global, a subsidiary of Fortune Brands.

Terry is now a small brand as far as Sherry is concerned, marketing only a Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso and PX, albeit of good quality, and it looks, unfortunately, as if Beam, a major player in the spirits world is not really interested in Sherry. What most of the acquisitors wanted from Terry was the brandy, Centenario, a big seller in its famous bottle with a yellow net round it. They also make a Brandy 1900 and a Brandy Primero.

Address: Visitor Centre Bodegas Fundador Pedro Domecq, Terry and Harveys

                 C/ San Ildefonso, 3, Jerez

Telephone: (+34) 956 15 15 00

Web: visitas@bodegasterry.com

Visits: yes, by arrangement online/telephone

1.2.14 Erotic Tapas Route!

We have wine routes, vineyard routes, tapas routes, and now we have an erotic tapas route! Yes, that’s right, and it is to be found/experienced/enjoyed in El Puerto de Santa Maria during the month of February. According to the tourism councillor, Raul Capdevila, this is a daring, innovative venture which shows off the local gastronomy with a varied and enjoyable range of tapas, menus, cocktails and desserts. He hopes it will attract people from all over Andalucia and farther.

This is not a totally new concept, however, as Fuengirola near Malaga has been doing this for at least four years now, not to mention La Palma and a few other places. Take a look online and see some of the tapas, there are some really silly ones!

30.5.13 Sanlucar Races Poster; Wine Display in El Puerto Tourist Office

At an event held at the bodegas of Hidalgo La Gitana to coincide with the start of the Feria de la Manzanilla, the official poster, painted by Reyes de la Lastra, was presented for the 168th Sanlucar Race Season. As yet the programme has not been finalised by the Sociedad de Carreras de Caballos de Sanlucar. The races will take place, as usual, on the beach on the 2,3,4 August, and the 16,17,18 August, an unmissable event. Javier Hidalgo himself is a veteran of a good many races.

The Puerto de Santa Maria council Tourism and promotions department has inaugurated a new initiative to inform and promote the wines of El Puerto and its entire viti-vinicultural patrimony. It takes the form of an exhibition of the wines in the Palacio de Aranibar, handy for all tourists visiting the tourist office. There are two display cases containing some 60 products including wines, spirits and vinegars, along with explanatory notes on their production and producers. Excellent idea.

Fino Campo de Guia 15%, Gutierrez Colosia

Appearance
Mid strawy yellowy gold, very light legs.
Nose
Full, lots of broad fleshy flor with saline, maritime edge - beach sand and even seaweed - touches of straw and bitter almond.
Palate
Broad soft and yeasty, low acid but attractive bitterness compensates, a young wine but quite serious and characterful, long and moreish.
Comments
Only a bit over 3 years old, but delicious, very yeasty and exuberant. The Campo de Guia is the bodega area of El Puerto de Santa Maria which sprang up in the XIX century between the bullring and the riverbank. Gutierrez Colosia's bodega is on the riverbank, and nearby are Luis Caballero and Osborne.
Price
6 euros ex bodega, but not available here as far as I know. Sorry.

Bodegas: Luis Caballero

It all began when Don Jose Cabaleiro do Largo and family decided to get involved in the wine business in Chipiona in 1795. The Cabaleiro family hailed from Vigo, Galicia, and were already known in the Jerez area as wood suppliers. A major step forward was the purchase, in 1830, of the old bodegas of the Dukes of Medinaceli in El Puerto de Santa Maria, which contained valuable old XVII century soleras of Amontillado and Oloroso. They acquired vineyards in Sanlucar and set up a still to distill the wines of Sanlucar and Chipiona. Since that time the company has been involved in the entire production process of wines and spirits.

By the 1870s the firm was expanding, having begun exports to Britain and America and bought two important vineyards totalling 33 hectares: El Benito and Las Cruzes. In 1908 the firm launched Conac Caballero and concentrated its export efforts to  Britain. At the end of the 1930s they opened a glass factory Vidrierias del Guadalete  mainly to supply America as the War had put Supplies from England out of reach. By the 1940s the firm became a Group with interests in glass, farming and wines and spirits. They acquired the bodegas of Jose de La Cuesta and John William Burdon in 1932, becoming Grupo Caballero. In the 1970s the company bought the old bodegas Sancho opposite the Puerto de Santa Maria bullring and restructured itself featuring its brands and there was strong growth in sales of both wines and spirits, especially for Ponche Caballero, the leading brand of its type.

This growth funded the acquisition of bodegas from outside the Sherry zone: Marques de Irun in Rueda; Vina Herminia in Rioja and Santuario in Toro, and in 1990 the best acquisition of them all, Emilio Lustau. The traditional old Cazalla distillery joined Grupo Caballero in 1996 and proceeded to successfully launch Miura liqueur, and a distribution company Europvin was established, based in Bordeaux and run by Christopher Cannan. In June 2008, Caballero acquired four of the famous Pedro Domecq brands: La Ina, Rio Viejo, Vina 25 and Botaina, which are marketed under the Lustau brand, yet keep the old Domecq appearance.

Caballero’s San Marcos bodegas in El Puerto de Santa Maria are integrated with the old XIIC Castillo San Marcos, and every summer a musical cycle of concerts is held in the patio which is one of the best cultural events in the town.

Castillo San Marcos

Bodegas San Marcos (formerly Sancho)

The Group products include:

Ponche, Liqueurs and Cream Liqueurs, Brandies, Table wines from Ribera del Duero, Rueda, Rioja and Distribution of others companies' brands.

Apart from the Lustau and Domecq brands, the bodegas own Sherries are:

Fino Pavon

Amo Don Luis

Oloroso Real

Manola Cream

Padre Lerchundi Moscatel de Chipiona

Address: Calle San Francisco, 32, El Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz

Web: www.caballero.es

Tel: 956 851 751

Visits: yes but phone in advance to arrange

Back from Jerez: Part 1

Just back from Jerez, and had a wonderful time, not surprisingly! I had only made three official bodega appointments, with the intention of taking things easily and getting at least some relaxation from my holiday, but that's not how it worked out. Inevitably. This is Jerez after all.

I had barely arrived and parked when I noticed an old house with a wall plaque announcing that the famous
                                                           singer Lola Flores was born here. Nearby there is a charming statue

 

     to her just outside the Centro Andaluz
     de Flamenco. The Flamenco legend
     Antonio Chacon is also remembered
     on another plaque erected in 1936 by
     the Republican Government. Further
     down the street, is the birthplace of
     another Flamenco legend, La Paquera.
     There too is a scruffy house with a plaque
     and at the end of the street, another
statue, one which really looks like her. I was in my element, my accommodation
was in the heart of flamenco-land as well as being very central. It would be a
wonderful thing to restore these houses and create museums, but Jerez is not
in a sound enough financial position at the moment - nor in the near future.

La Paquera

 Anyway I was here to see about Sherry, and my first appointment was the following day with Osborne in El Puerto de Santa Maria. The estuary-side town is a short drive from Jerez with a prominent bullring (built by Osborne).
The firm has two main bodega complexes here, one for the extensive range
of brandies and the other for the Sherries. This is where I met with Area Director Stanley Manski and Technical Director and Enologist Jose Ignacio Lozano. Real gentlemen both, we began with a discussion of the VORS
Sherries: Capuchino, Amo. 51-1a, Venerable and Sibarita, whose soleras
brands and bodegas were bought from Pernod Ricard when they disposed
of Domecq. These wines are all well over 30 years old and among the best
of their kind, coming from some of the oldest soleras in Jerez, yet have the
most astounding fragrance and elegance without much woodiness.

Jose Ignacio explained the tortuous lengths they have to go to to prove the wines' age to the Consejo and the amount of stock they need to have. The sacas (withdrawals from solera) are rare, perhaps annual, and so production is tiny despite demand. The wines sell in Scotland for about £35 and represent an absolute bargain. The bodega makes little profit, but the pleasure and value offered to the consumer is immense.

Our attention turned to the Venerable PX and the summer
phenomenon of the butts "weeping" (see right). It really does
look as if the barrels are weeping - all the staves of the butts
are being forced apart very slightly by the action of sugar in
the wine setting in the summer heat. This wine has nearly 500 grams per litre of sugar in it (all totally natural from the grapes
- or raisins) and as tiny amounts of almost solid PX ooze out
between the staves there is a fantastic smell but it can attract flies.
All this puts some strain on the butts, and the coopers need to
tighten up the hoops occasionally.

After an in-depth talk and tasting with the charming chaps at Osborne, to whom I am much indebted, it was time for a spot
of lunch, and I wandered down past the Gutierrez Colosia bodegas ( I confess I bought some wine - well, wouldn't you?!)
to the riverfront and found a typical local bar where I found just how well Osborne's Fino Quinta matches with olives and ham. Very well indeed!

Fino Quinta was followed by Fino Pavon from the other big bodega in El Puerto, Luis Caballero (owner of Emilio Lustau) and the Pavon was accompanied by more ham and olives. Delicious! After chatting with a few locals, thoroughly nice folk, and taking a few photos, I left the town with a distinct feeling of happiness and satisfaction.