5.3.16 Espinosa Family Buys Díez Mérito; BIB Handbag

The Espinosa family of Jerez has bought the Díez Mérito bodegas from the heirs of Marcos Eguizábal for an undisclosed price. Long connected with vinegrowing in Jerez and with connections to the cooperative Nuestra Señora de las Angustias, they have bought the bodegas Bertemati and El Cuadro between the Calle Diego Fernández Herrera and Calle Porvenir as well as the production centre on the Morabita road. The company will now be known as Viñas y Bodegas Díez Mérito and the 16 members of the workforce will be retained.

The patio of the Bertemati Bodega

According to Salvador Espinosa, family spokesman, they have bought 1 million litres of wine and 0.8 million litres of brandy along with some high quality vinegar. This historic old company had been languishing despite having famous and top quality Sherry brands like Fino Imperial, Victoria Regina, Bertola and Pemartín and Conde de los Andes Brandy. The deal includes the brand Otaola which is a range of Pacharán and herb liqueurs. The Espinosas want to put the brands back in the market position they deserve to be. Diez Hermanos was established in 1876 and in 1979 took over Marqués del Mérito who owned the beautiful Bertemati bodega. Díez Mérito was in turn taken over by Rumasa and after its collapse the Riojan businessman Marcos Eguizábal bought the firm along with Bertola and Paternina in 1985.

A new up-market bag-in-box aimed at women has been launched. The Vernissage BIB is disguised as a designer handbag and holds one and a half litres of French wine – but there’s no room for anything else unfortunately. It comes in three designs and costs a rather expensive £30 from online retailer Firebox who will be hoping to cash in on Mother’s Day. Don’t tell the Sanlúcar rebels!

Vieja Solera PX VORS 16%, Diez Merito/Paternina

Appearance
Glass-tinting intense blacky brown to yellow rim, very viscous.
Nose
Deeply aromatic, lots of well sunned pasas, very fruity with notes of dried fig and date as well, then there's the phenolic side with hints of American oak, raw chocolate, coffee and caramel, all well integrated over time.
Palate
Very rich, unctuous and intense. The wine is nicely balanced between massive raisiny sweetness and the bitter phenolic feel of coffee, traces of chocolate and oak, giving it character and amazing length. It is pretty full bodied, but extremely elegant and nuanced.
Comments
A delicious wine which comes from the former Bertola bodegas (est. 1919). The must was fermented to about 9%/vol and then fortified to 16%, and the next 30 years were spent ageing, concentrating into this intense wine which has dried a little in all those years.
Price
About 80 Euros in Spain, not available in the UK unfortunately.

Amontillado VORS Fino Imperial" 18%, Diez Merito (Paternina)

Appearance 

Bright pure amber fading through yellow to a slight hint of green at the rim.

Nose

Very forthcoming and aromatic with a gentle sweetness wrapped around toasted hazelnuts and almonds and a definite hint of cinnamon, a little like lebkuchen. Traces of oak, gingerbread, dried fruits and a touch of alcohol add to the complexity. This is very attractive, fresh and fragrant, still with the very slightest hints as to its Fino background. It is all very subtle.

Palate

Quite light and fresh compared to many VORS Amontillados, incredibly elegant with a fair acidic tang which keeps it clean. Then the flavour floods in, again all those nuts and hints of spice, some glycerol to balance the tannins and acidity and make it really smooth. It is a kind of gentle giant: lots of character but (too) easy to drink yet has terrific depth of flavour and length. Sheer class.

Comments

Perhaps the name of this wine is confusing. How can a thirty year old Amontillado be called Fino? Well it started out as a Fino, and surprisingly still retains some Fino characteristics. It should be pointed out that the terms Fino-Amontillado or Amontillado-Fino are no longer permitted as, however accurate they may have been in describing the wine, they could cause confusion. So Fino Imperial is a brand name rather than a description. It is sealed with a driven cork, so can be laid down for years - if you can resist it!

Made from Palomino grapes from albariza soils in Jerez Superior, the wine spends its first 5 years under Flor and used to be refreshed from time to time with Manzanilla Pasada (helping slightly with the Fino characteristics) though now Fino is used. The next 25 years are spent gently oxidising. There are 5 criaderas and a 27-butt solera laid down in 1793. Over such a period, the wine reaches its strength naturally, and needs no further fortification. The solera was bought by Diez Hermanos, and predates that company's foundation in 1876. Even the wine from the last criadera is superb!

Price

This isn't cheap at 93 Euros ex bodega, (but it does come in a wooden box!) It is a must-try wine, though. Unfortunately it is not available in the UK.

Oloroso Victoria Regina VORS 20%, Diez Merito (Paternina)

Appearance

Deep amber/chestnut with hint of burnt umber fading through amber to yellow to trace of green at rim, legs.

Nose

Elegant, sophisticated,complex and immediately attractive. There is a lot going on here: lots of walnuts and toasted almonds with umami hints of meat broth and Marmite, traces of albero (earth floor) and wood from the barrels - you can smell the bodega atmosphere, and there is the implied sweetness there that you'd expect, wrapping everything up together in perfect harmony.

Palate

All of the above and quite intensely so. It has that character only offered by really old wines of total integration of all the various flavour notes where the glycerol makes it more than palatable balancing out the astringent wood notes adding to the feel and complexity. Lots of walnuts in syrup, traces of vanilla and dried fruits, but with a very slight tannic edge. A really refined wine, very smooth with terrific length. Textbook old Oloroso. Bring on the mature Manchego!

Comments

100% Palomino grapes grown in Jerez Superior albariza soils go to produce this lovely Oloroso. It comes from a solera of 27 butts plus 5 criaderas, more than average for this style, though I'm sure the scales are not run very often. The solera, which dates from 1906, was bought by Diez Hermanos from Ysasi. The wine was fortified to 17% and the extra 3% has been developed through transpiration losses over 30 plus years in solera.

Price

This wine sells in Spain for about 85 Euros (including individual wooden box), but unfortunately seems to be unavailable in the UK. What a shame!

Bodegas: Bertola

Bertola was established in 1911when the Port firm CN Kopke, the oldest Port producer (est. 1638,) decided to enter the Sherry business. The interest of Port firms dealing in Sherry or vice versa was common at the time, but while Kopke’s interest in Sherry did not last long, it lasted long enough for the firm to be known as Kopke Bertola for a while.

The Craven-Bartle family, originally from Birmingham, had come to Valencia to be involved in the engineering business, but William Craven-Bartle Wood (1879-1949) and his son Joseph Craven-Bartle Montagut, (1912-1978) both born in Valencia, moved to Jerez in the 1920s, taking over the business from Kopke towards the end of that decade.

William Craven Bartle Wood (Foto: Jerez Siempre)

The bodega was in the Calle Mendoza, later moving to Calle Canto. The firm was very successful, selling its wines under the Craven brand, later changing the name to the more Spanish-sounding Bertola, an approximate acronym of Bartle. Bertola began as Bertola & Co Ltd registered in England and Bertola SA registered in Spain. There was even a Bertola Mexico SA, which made brandies for that market and imported Spanish products. At around this time, Diez Hermanos had a stake in Bertola, but this did not last very long.

The Bertola complex as it looks today

A new bodega complex opened in April 1964, 6,500 m2 on a site of 14,000, as rapid expansion had been foreseen. It was situated near the start of the road to Sanlucar.  It was state of the art in terms of winemaking, yet all this was housed in traditional architecture. The neighbouring industrial estate was named after it: the Poligono Bertola.

The classic old Bertola Cream (ad from 1960's) ((Foto: Ebay))

Many members of the British wine trade were present for the opening, including the boss of UK importer Evans Marshall, along with members of the Jerez City Council, the Consejo Regulador, and board members of Bertola. It is not known if anybody was there from Peter Thomson, the Scottish agents based at Crieff Road in Perth, who had particular success with Bertola Cream.

The famous Lola Bertola featured in much advertising

Brands included Fino Canto, Las Indias, Oloroso Tom Bowling, Bertola Cream, Bertola Milk, Ponche Portobello and various brandies.

In 1972 the firm succumbed to Rumasa, and was merged into the giant Bodegas Internacionales alongside Misa, Pemartin, Varela, Diestro and Otaolaurruchi in a huge bodega complex of some 50,000 m2 (now Williams & Humbert). After expropriation by the Spanish government in 1983, Bertola, along with Diez Merito and Pemartin were bought by Marcos Eguizabal in 1985 and merged with his (also ex-Rumasa) bodega in Rioja, Federico Paternina to form Grupo Paternina. In March 2016 the Sherry division of Paternina was bought by the local family the Espinosas, who have since made great strides in promoting them.

Interestingly, one William Craven- Bartle is export director at Williams & Humbert. Daniel Craven Bartle Coll is head of the Juan Grande Hospital.

Bodegas: Pemartin

Julian Pemartin Rodis, born in Oloron in France in 1770, was a Frenchman who, like many others, had left France’s difficult political and social situation caused by the Revolution. He went to Spain while still a very young man and then spent 20 years in Mexico, where he made a fortune at the silver mines of Zacatecas. Instability and complicated politics in Mexico caused by the movement for independence from Spain, however, decided him to leave, and go back to Spain. He took out Spanish nationality in 1815 and married Mercedes Carolina Laborde Lafargue.

He already had relations in the Sherry area, who no doubt informed him that the Sherry trade was growing rapidly and would be a very profitable investment. He was by no means the only person returning from South America and setting up in business in Spain at that time.  Pemartin set up in business in Jerez in 1818 with a partner, Fermin de Apezechea, bought land and planted a vineyard at Cerro Nuevo in the Macharnudo. They used bodegas in Calle Pizarro before constructing new ones in which consisted of a whole block between Calle Diego Fernandez Herrera and Calle Medina, built in 1819 around a central patio with a well and known as El Cuadro. 

A corner of El Cuadro (Foto reilop.es)

Over the following 30 years, the business prospered, both as an almacenista and as an exporter. Julian’s brother in law, Manuel Lagarde joined the business, effectively running it, and in the early 1820s appointed George Sandeman as their agent in London. Julian became a member of the growing bourgeoisie of moneyed wine producers, and was one of the investors in the railway. In 1830 Fermin de Apezechea retired, (he died in 1836) and Julian was left sole owner of the firm. By about 1850 his bodegas held around 1,600 butts.

In 1853 Julian died, leaving the business to his 3 sons, Julian, Jose and Francisco. The elder, Julian Maria Pemartin Laborde (1816-1885), who had married Cristina Hernandez Boutrix was well known as a spendthrift. The firm had been the largest exporter in 1856, but by 1864 they were drawing large, and unauthorised credits from Sandeman while the quality of the wine was deteriorating. In 1866 he dissolved the company and re-started it on his own. Virtually from that moment, the company’s fortunes began to wane, and yet he felt that having seen such success in business, he should be showing it off.

Julian adorning his house (Foto Jerez Siempre)

He spent a fortune building a palatial home known as the Recreo de las Cadenas between the Calle Pizarro and the Avenida Duque de Abrantes. He and Cristina lived in Calle Porvera till it was completed. It is reputed to have been designed by French architect Charles Garnier (famous for the Paris Opera House and the Casino at Monte Carlo) but was more likely designed by another French architect, Samuel Revel, and completed in 1868. This fabulous palace possessed extensive botanic gardens with lakes, fountains and exotic plants. Julian entertained lavishly the great and the good of the day, even the King. The palace is now the headquarters of the Real Escuela del Arte Ecuestre - or Spanish riding school, whose installations are adjacent. It is a popular venue for weddings.

(Foto realescuela.org)

Having overstretched the firm, and despite being in the top ten exporters in 1869, Jose went spectacularly bust on the 28^th June 1879 with debts of close to 4 million reales de vellon (units of currency introduced by Napoleon worth 2.5 to the Spanish Real), and owing Sandeman £10,000.

This level of debt to Sandeman gave them the right to the entire Pemartin business, including the bodegas, vineyards, soleras, and the palatial house, which was later sold to the Duque de Abrantes in 1927 after being used as a home for the resident partner, Walter J Buck. What they didn’t manage to acquire were the trademarks, and so had to pay royalties for their use until they bought them from his heirs in 1899. Julian had died, childless, in 1885.

The Pemartin creditors in Spain, however, re-started the firm, with Julian’s younger brothers under the name Jose Pemartin y Cia., and there was considerable acrimony as to who had more right to use the trademarks. This was eventually resolved amicably. The firm continued to trade until being taken over by Rumasa in 1981. After the collapse of Rumasa, the Government merged Pemartin with Bodegas Internacionales (BISA) in 1984 along with Misa, Bertola, Varela, Diestro and Otaolaurruchi. In 1994 BISA was bought by the Rioja businessman Marcos Eguizabal, who had already bought the ex Rumasa Rioja bodega Paternina from the Government. In early 2016 the Eguizabal heirs sold out to the local Espinosa family.

The once famous Pemartin brand is now all but moribund, except for a basic range of Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso, Cream and PX, as well as vinegar of that name.

Brands of the past include the Berisford Solera 1914 range in dumpy wired bottles, Royal Cream – in a silvered bottle, Brandy Numancia, Pemartin Vermouth.

The Pemartin family left a positive mark on Jerez, however:  Jose Pemartin (1888-1954) was a philosopher, and Julian Pemartin (1901-1966) wrote the famous Diccionario del Vino de Jerez. Another positive thing is that Sandeman have recently given their historic documents, and those of Pemartin, to the Jerez Municipal Archive, so they can now be studied by historians and academics - and receive better conservation.

Berisford Solera 1914