Buying Old Sherry

The amazing prices achieved by wines at the glamorous auction houses of Christies and Sotheby’s (among many others) are most often great vintages of Claret and Burgundy. Fine wines from other places are more of a second division, and Sherry is rarely seen. When it is, the prices are usually pretty reasonable by comparison.

There was one exception: “Massandra Sherry de la Frontera” 1775, sold by Sotheby’s for $43,500 in 2001, was the oldest and most expensive Sherry ever auctioned. The Massandra winery in Crimea which has the world’s largest wine collection has been planning to sell another bottle, hoping to raise a million euros. The wine was widely publicised and Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi widely criticised when they drank a bottle while visiting. There are those who dispute that the wine is really genuine Sherry, and not the product of Crimea itself. Maybe we could consult those politicians!

The Massandra Sherry

The Reliquia range from Barbadillo (Amontillado, Oloroso, Palo Cortado and PX) which are extremely old wines, sell at £500-700 a bottle and their oldest of all, Versos, sells at £7,000, all these in the UK trade. In 1999 Christies arrived at Williams & Humbert to taste their collection of vintage wines and persuaded them to auction some of these “Glorious Wines”, as Christies’ director Thomas Hudson put it. They sold for an average of 250 euros per bottle in 2006 and at up to 600 euros at later sales in London, New York and Los Angeles. So the value of old Sherry is in the low hundreds of pounds unless it is exceptional or extremely rare.

These Pemartin Berisford Solera 1914s bottled 1980s were sold as vintage for £120

These are all top notch Sherries, easily the equal of many of the record breaking Clarets and Burgundies in terms of quality, and often much older, so amazing value. But this age thing is a problem. Most fine wines carry a vintage date so one knows how old they are, but Sherry very rarely does, and one comes across it for sale with the solera foundation date mistaken for the vintage, and a price to match, even though the word “solera” appears on the label! A quick glance at the bottle would tell most people the wine could not possibly be that age – I saw an “1830” with a plastic top! I believe it is generally ignorance rather than dishonesty.

I have seen González Byass Solera 1847 (retail price @ 7 euros) for sale online at 1050.00 euros! Okay, it is an older bottling, but not more than 20 years old. Osborne PX 1827 is another example; retail price about 9 euros, and offered online (maybe a 30 year-old bottling) for 1030.00 euros! The same site has Williams & Humbert’s Dry Sack and Canasta Cream, both still available, and again older bottlings, at 810.00 euros. They are listed as 1877 – the year the bodega was founded. I got in touch about these – twice –but nothing has changed, and I only mention a few wines from the list. I would be interested to know what was paid for them.

Another problem is that some people seem unable to distinguish Sherry from Montilla (good though it is, Alvear PX Solera 1830 is not a Sherry – and it was also priced as a vintage). Neither is the excellent Toro Albalá, also Montilla, and De Muller Tarragona is not Sherry either. It is red for a start! If it is Sherry it will say so on the label, and if it doesn’t, then it isn’t. And worse, there are still websites selling imitations as “Sherry”, and some products from South Africa, New Zealand and the US still carry the S word on the label. There is a huge amount of work still to be done by the Consejo Regulador to protect the name Sherry, and as far as buying old Sherry online is concerned, be VERY careful and shop around, it is amazing how prices vary. Caveat emptor.

13.2.13 Fake Sherry; Barbadillo; Japanese Venenciadores

The Sherry bodegas are beginning to scent victory in the endless fight against fake Sherry.  Canada has agreed to ban these products as of the 31^st December next, when the period for selling these through expires. This is the latest in a series of bans on wines masquerading as all sorts of classic European appellations, after talks between Canada and the European Union which began 10 years ago. Previously, Canadian made “Sherry” was outselling the real thing by 9-1, and now, at last, there is an opportunity for the real thing to improve its position. Now the Consejo needs to look at the USA, especially in light of the recent success of Sherryfest in New York. American Sherries outsell Spanish ones by 5-1. Other countries too, have imitation Sherry, but in much smaller quantities.

Two wines from Bodegas Barbadillo have been awarded prizes by the Spanish Association of Journalists and Wine Writers. Amontillado VORS and Manzanilla Solear won against 403 other wines, making Jerez the Denominacion de Origen with the most awards with 7 prizes in total.

Recently a group of 10 Japanese wine professionals visited Jerez to take part in the ninth edition of the Japan Sherry Academy. They attended in-depth seminars on all aspects of Sherry imparted by Beltran Domecq and Cesar Saldana. Every year in Japan, an important market for Sherry, a venencia competition is held, and last year’s winner, Kosuno Ki Yokihuro was on hand.

Fake Sherry

When a wine has been so famous for so long as Sherry has, imitations inevitably appear, and while that might be construed as flattery, some of the imitations were much less than flattering. The New World in particular produced all sorts of "copies" of famous wines such as Californian "Chablis", Australian "Port" often with little resemblance to the original but certainly drinkable wines. After all, the famous names were used more as a description of the style rather than direct impersonation. Sherry probably suffered the most humiliation at the hands of the fakers however.

While Sherry has been faked for centuries, it was really between the 1960's and the end of the 1980's that faking was at its height. At that time Sherry had a huge, mainly sweet market in Britain, led by the redoubtable Harveys' Bristol Cream, but it had an alcoholic strength of over 15% vol. as it was fortified more heavily than now (usually @17.5 - 18% vol). Until the 1970's it was still shipped in butt, and the extra alcohol protected the wine on its journey but this meant it was subject to a higher rate of excise duty, and that is where the impersonators came in.

From Spain itself similar wines were imported from Montilla-Moriles, a quality wine area in Cordoba but with cheaper wines, and passed off as Sherry. They still are in a way as people only see the words Cream or Fino and assume it is Sherry, even though it does say on the label that it is from Montilla-Moriles. The word Montilla resembles Amontillado. At least Montilla (as it is known) is good natural wine - often excellent, and not a fake as such. During the sales boom of the 1970's even Sherry itself suffered a reduction in quality due to overproduction. This only affected commercial blends though, not "proper" Sherries.

There were various lower quality perpetrators of fakes: Britain, Cyprus, South Africa and Australia mainly. Australia South Africa and Cyprus managed to get hold of flor yeast, and the locally made "Sherries" were at least passable if not occasionally quite decent - but not very similar to the real thing. They had the advantage that they were made just under 15% vol and (except Cyprus) had a preferential Commonwealth duty rate. Cyprus had the biggest market of the three in Britain being a lot closer. It consisted of either concentrated must or ready made wines which reached about 15 million litres at its peak, second only to Harveys' Bristol Cream.

 Winemaking in Cyprus was poor, however, and dominated by big commercial enterprises. Even in flor wines, ageing was for only 2 years, and the sweet wines were aged outside in the sun to oxidise quicker and often had concentrated must added. Remember Emva Cream? But the worst abominations were "British". These "wines" were either made from poor quality concentrated grape must or raisins imported from Cyprus (or wherever), then reconstituted here, fortified and adjusted, or imported already made. They were neither British nor Sherry - nor even good. But worse, they are still with us. They haunt the bottom shelves in supermarkets, names like QC Cream among others, often supermarket own brands.


After years of protest by the Consejo Regulador in Jerez, the European Union finally ruled on Sherry in 1996 stating that only wine with the Denominacion de Origen Jerez could use the word "Sherry". Hooray! you must be thinking, but it wasn't a total victory. The ruling gave producers of imitations time to change their labelling and sell through old stock, and in that time they promoted their brands and implanted the brand name rather than that of Sherry in consumers' minds, so when the new labels arrived on the shelves they resembled the old ones, and still, annoyingly, were allowed to use Sherry terms such as Fino and Cream. So all that really happened was the loss of the word Sherry from the labels which few even noticed. Still, over time sales of these products have waned, and tastes have changed a bit as well, thank goodness.

Surely the Consejo could finish off these ghastly products, by hassling the EU to forbid the use of Sherry terms on "wines" which are not Sherry, and at the same time spend some money on a really good campaign to promote Proper Sherry, specifically aimed at younger people. They have more open minds, are willing to experiment, and are the potential next generation of Sherry drinkers. Anyway, for the avoidance of doubt, proper Sherry is the only wine permitted to have the above logo on the back label.