Bristol Cream 17.5%, Harveys

Appearance

Fairly pale for a cream, deep amber fading through yellow to a pale rim with the slightest hint of green, legs.

Nose

Rich and sweet, very light oloroso with only hints of PX, and slightly savoury, almost pickled walnut oxidised notes. There are hints of raisin, yeast autolysis and damp barrels as well as a certain rather old fashioned  seriousness. Looks as if the wine has been further aged after blending - quite homogeneous.

Palate

Sweet on entry and quite light (not really as full bodied as the label says), quite mellow, attractive amontillado/oloroso flavours rather obscured by sweetness, but, well, it's a sweet Sherry! A classic (the original!) cream, long complex and interesting.

Comments

Along with Tio Pepe, the world's best known Sherry. HBC (as it is known in the trade) has in recent times come in a Bristol Blue bottle, presumably to reflect its Bristol heritage, though it is an odd colour in which to present a Sherry. The blue glass was a Bristol tradition, starting in the early 18th C and running out of steam in the early 20th C, but has since seen some revival. The blue comes from Cobalt Oxide. HBC was originally further matured, blended and bottled in Bristol using wines imported from Jerez, but has for some time now been completely produced and bottled in Jerez. Finos, Amontillados, Olorosos and 20% PX are all in the mix, giving a fairly unique style. It contains 135g/l sugars. In an attempt to sell more presumably, the label advises one to drink it chilled or mix it with lemonade and slices of fruit. Pleasant though that is, to do so would ruin a very fine Sherry.

Price

Around £ 10.00, widely available.

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.

The Rumasa Saga: part 1

The Rumasa (RUiz MAteos S.A.) story deserves to be written by a skilled potboiler novelist, as it is filled with scandal, corruption, skullduggery - and even humour. It might even make a good film.

The undoubted leading man, or perhaps antihero, in the tale is Jose Maria Ruiz Mateos Jimenez de Tejada, born in Jerez in 1931 whose father, Zoilo Ruiz Mateos Camacho, had a small almacenista business of the same name originally established in Rota in 1857. Jose Maria was the more ambitious and business-like of Zoilo's sons, and from about 1960 quickly started building up the firm, which had by now moved to Jerez. It's consequent growth was quite phenomenal. So phenomenal, in fact, that nobody could quite believe it.

Most of part 1 of this tale took place under the dictatorship of General Franco, who by supporting the Catholic Church received its support in return, especially from ultra-Catholic Opus Dei. This is a group of mostly lay people who believe that ordinary life is a path to sanctity, and do charitable works, but it has been accused of secretiveness, elitism, and support for the right wing, not to mention cronyism. The Franco regime began a liberalisation of the economy in 1959 using many technocratic ideas of Opus Dei such as credit for business, help with export and redevelopment of deprived areas, but this only led to almost inevitable large scale corruption. Strangely, many members of Opus Dei benefited enormously, and our Jose Maria was only one. Rumasa could only have grown the way it did with state help. One of the Ruiz Mateos family was related to the Director of the Institute of Credit; the older sons of the Governor of the Bank of Spain worked for Rumasa.

In 1964, having badgered them for some years, Ruiz Mateos signed a deal with Harveys of Bristol to supply all the wine they needed for 99 years. He went to extraordinary lengths to prove to the Harveys executives that he could meet their needs. At that time Bristol Cream, and other Harveys brands were huge sellers, and RM could never supply all their needs, so another bodega was bought. The Harveys money along with credit was used to buy a bank to finance more bodegas and so on. In 1960 the company was worth 300,000 pesetas, and by 1969 it was worth 2000 million, and by the time of its demise it consisted of around 700 subsidiaries in Spain alone as well as others abroad, including 18 banks (he famously bought three banks in one day), 18 bodegas, construction firms, insurance companies, estate agencies, hotels, food and drinks companies etc etc. worth 111 billion.

The firm´s vineyard division, Viñedos Españoles, planted some 2,000 hectares in Jerez alone (bringing the total to 22,000 ha) and they controlled 33% of the Sherry industry and 25% of the Brandy industry. Rumasa´s hexagonal busy bee logo was to be seen everywhere. Other firms viewed Rumasa with considerable and justified suspicion; this was no longer the gentlemanly Sherry business of old and quality was being sacrificed for quantity. The big firms had an agreement that they would help each other in case of an attack by Rumasa. Its affairs were labyrinthine, and it was beginning to owe the tax man big time.

The global oil crisis of 1973 brought a dramatic reduction in sales and affected the Sherry industry decisively creating a situation of oversupply of some 46%. At that time 400,000 butts were being produced and sales were running at 270,000. This caused a price war which Rumasa was determined to win at any cost and Sherry was sold below cost forcing other firms to try and compete with many going bust and being bought up by Rumasa. When the government offered subsidies to promote exports, Rumasa exported vast quantities of wine, much of it of doubtful quality and whether it was actually sold or not, and stored it in warehouses in the UK. The Augustus Barnett wine retail chain, owned by Rumasa, had huge stocks of Sherry at knockdown prices. Things did not augur well for either Rumasa or the industry itself.

One nail in Rumasa's coffin came in the form of the takeover of Harveys by Showerings in 1965 and the purchase of the old bodega MacKenzie as a base in Jerez. Harveys were already suspicious of Rumasa and the exclusive supply contract was cancelled. Meanwhile International Distillers and Vintners (IDV) built a whole new bodega complex called Rancho Croft, using the name of their long-established Port subsidiary. Gilbeys (the oldest part of IDV already had soleras in Jerez at Gonzalez Byass). It was at Rancho Croft that the first pale cream sherries were produced and they soon provided stiff opposition to Harveys.

In 1983 the Socialist government of a newly democratic Spain decided to get the tax it was due, and expropriated the component companies of Rumasa, going through their books with a fine toothcomb and finding, needless to say, endless tax fiddles and a web of complicated interactions. Jose Maria fled to the UK and was later arrested in Frankfurt. For the next decade or so there was endless litigation - at one court case he appeared dressed as Superman - and he counterclaimed against the Spanish Government, seeking compensation. He was eventually, and controversially, absolved by the Supreme Court, but was refused the compensation he had bitterly contested for Williams & Humbert, which went to the Dutch firm Ahold. This was complicated by the fact that the Ruiz Mateos family owned the Dry Sack brand name while Rumasa owned the rest.

This was, apparently, the end of Rumasa. The component companies had been sold off by the Government back to the private sector, and life in Jerez returned to something like normal, though in fact much had changed. Many of the subsidiary bodegas had by now lost their individual identities, having been swallowed up by bigger concerns within the group, and many famous names disappeared. Names like:

AR Ruiz Hermanos.
Union de Exportadores de Jerez
Palomino & Vergara
Marques de Misa
Varela
Diestro Hermanos
Otaolaurruchi
Diaz Morales
Valderrama
Vergara & Gordon
Bodegas Internacionales


Those which survived more or less intact were:

Williams & Humbert
Garvey
Diez-Merito
Bertola
Pemartin