Dr Borrego Pla's Lecture on Sherry's links to Three Continents

This is an abstract from the lecture Dr María del Carmen Borrego Plá gave at Williams & Humbert the other evening. Her topic was “Return Traffic: the links between three continents” and one she is uniquely expert on, having a doctorate in history and being part owner with her mother of Bodegas El Maestro Sierra.

Dr Borrego focused her lecture on the exceptional “network of interests and exchanges” which was created from the start of the XVI century between Spain, the “Indies” and Asia. These interchanges, which have rarely been studied in depth, have been mainly centred on luxury products and those relevant to nutrition and the pharmacopeia. Many of our modern day customs have derived from these connections between the three continents without us being aware of it. This was the earliest economic globalisation and it is very similar to current globalisation theories.

Dr Borrego addressing over 80 people in the area of the bodega where they store the Anadas

She stressed the “luxury mentality of the Renaissance” and the nature of the products involved, which were considered to be of high value, and which arrived in Castile mainly via Venice and Constantinople. The fall of the latter into the hands of the Turks, who decided to cease trading with Europe, was the turning point where Spain and Portugal decided to search out their own products. Dr Borrego explained how Spain and Portugal in the days of the great navigators also decided to go to China following the papal allocation of their own new Atlantic shipping routes, through which Spain would go on to discover a new continent.

Commercial efforts in the Indies as well as China and the Philippines as strategic enclaves of the Spanish trading network are some of the historic milestones she addressed, as well as the route of the well-known “Manila Galleon” which gave Spain entry to the Philippines and vice-versa.

Studies of the products traded reveal a wide range; imported from the Indies were maize, potatoes, cacao and tobacco, to mention just a few examples, and exported from Spain; livestock, various crops, and of course wine, while from Asia, lacquer, silk and spices were imported.

Dr Borrego with Jesus Medina Garcia de Polavieja, director of Williams & Humbert

In the end we would find that Sherry would become one of the central threads in this network and exchange of trade routes and cultures. It was transported by ship in containers made of wood, ceramic or leather and mostly sent to Mexico since winemaking was difficult there on account of problems with pruning techniques. Sherry was already highly valued and was even used as a means of payment with the older wine having a higher commercial value than the younger.

These wines from Jerez arrived in the Philippines by the route of the aforementioned Manila Galleon (also known as the China Ship or the Acapulco Galleon). This route would link Spain with the Philippines and connect the ports of Seville, Veracruz, Acapulco and Manila. It was a complicated route, a mix of land and sea crossings. In the case of the Philippines it involved sailing from the Atlantic into the Pacific, the ocean they referred to as the Sea of Silk and Silver for the huge quantities of these goods which crossed its waters.

Dr Borrego also described how the tobacco pouches from the Indies came wrapped in Chinese silk. This silk, then so cheap that tobacco was wrapped in it, was used by the girls in the tobacco factory in Seville to make their own shawls. This unprecedented exchange of culture and trade also affected Sherry labelling (especially Manzanilla) which frequently used representations of these women in their shawls, thus reflecting the links between these three continents through three products; tobacco, silk and wine.

The Challenges Facing Sherry, Lecture at Williams & Humbert

Williams & Humbert last night hosted the first of their excellent cycle of lectures for 2017 at the bodega. The speaker was Manuel Pimentel, ex minister for work and social affairs and ex-president of the Consejo Regulador of Montilla-Moriles among many other posts, and his theme was “The Changes Faced by Wine in Society, Bodegas and Consejos Reguladores”.  He began optimistically saying that things are looking up, “we have already touched the bottom”, but Sherry faces many challenges, one being to stop being seen only as a wine for ferias and romerіas (pilgrimages), and approach young urban people who are not familiar with it. They are always looking for something different, and that is one of Sherry’s many attributes, so reaching them would bring better times.

The lecture put considerable focus on the importance of Consejos Reguladores saying that “we associate wine with the place it is made, and thus the importance of the DO which defines it and guarantees a minimum quality to its particular style. If shifting the focus back to the vineyards, to the origins, is a trend, then the DOs have a fundamental role to play along with the Consejos Reguladores which regulate them”. He said that while bodegas, cooperatives and growers are proud of their DO they often mistrust it, seeing it simply as an expensive immovable bureaucratic organisation, restrictive rather than helpful.

Manuel Pimentel (L) and W&H CEO Jesus Medina (foto:Pascual diariodejerez)

So do Consejos Reguladores have a future? Absolutely, according to Pimentel who said that if they didn’t already exist they would have to be invented. “But they must evolve in unison with social changes, fashions of producers and consumers and the technical possibilities which will amaze us in the coming years. Furthermore, the wine world in general and the Consejos Reguladores in particular should fight for wine to be considered a healthy drink unlike certain others.

He noted the recent growth in wine consumption in Spain, but while in the 1970s it stood at 40 litres per person per year, it stands at only 21 litres now. There are without doubt social factors beyond just the economic crisis, and those social changes related to the perception of wine are the ones which should be addressed by the Consejos Reguladores. “Urban society idolises the natural, and wine is just that. No product symbolises the land quite like wine, and people are attracted to its culture and participate in the story it has to tell, but this requires sustainability of production in the face of better environmental awareness.

These days, consumers are very worried about their health and quality of life, and wine is full of healthy attributes which should be promoted. The health benefits of biological ageing of Sherry deserve to be researched; after all, red wine has been promoting itself on its antioxidant properties and cardiovascular benefits for years. People nowadays value leisure time more; the millennials consider it equally important to their professional life and they value wine more as the perfect drink for social occasions than for everyday; drinking better wine but less frequently. As great users of the internet and social media, wine should be seducing them by that means. Consumers look for more quality and variety because they want to feel special and are prepared to pay for it. Sherry has all these attributes in spades, so Pimentel said he was “reasonably optimistic” for wine in general and Sherry in particular.

13.6.16 Sherry in Shakespeare’s Day

Sherry was hugely popular in Shakespeare’s time and nobody gave it more passionate promotion. In the year in which we celebrate the 400^th anniversary of his death, Williams & Humbert are offering another lecture in the Ciclo de Conferencias series entitled Sherry in Shakespeare’s Times. It will be given by José Luís Jiménez, an expert on the subject and member of the Real Academia de San Dionisio, who was the prime mover in erecting a memorial to the bard in Jerez. Williams & Humbert have two excellent brands of Sherry named after Shakespeare plays: A Winter’s Tale and As You Like It, and was of course founded by two Englishmen. The event is free and takes place at the bodega.

22.5.16 Luís Pérez Lecture at Williams & Humbert Ciclo de Conferencias

It took Jesús Medina, director general of Williams & Humbert, nearly ten minutes to run through all the qualifications and achievements of Luís Pérez in his introduction to the lecture, such is the greatness of this man, an academic, chemist, oenologist and bodeguero with vast experience in the Marco de Jerez, and yet down to earth and with ready humour. He is regarded as one of the fathers of the silent revolution which aims to reclaim the value and relevance of the vineyard. The Lecture was titled “Sherry: A look toward the future” and was very well attended by over 150 people in the exotic surroundings of thousands of butts of Sherry. Here is a brief summary.

Luis Perez (L) and Jesus Medina

Luís began by setting out the challenge: how to give Sherry more value and thus a brighter future. He asked which other place in the world has the volume of wine with the amount of ageing as our VOS and VORS? “Now is the time to consider what we should be doing, not what we should have done, “he said. He went on to make various important points:

 “A wine cannot be understood without the influence of its vineyard”. No other wine but Sherry evolves so much during its ageing so it is easy to think it is the product of the bodegas rather than the vineyards, and this has happened over the last 40 years, but the vineyards must be recognised. He also pointed to the standardisation of Sherry and the fact that Fino and Manzanilla are interchangeable so long as they are aged in the appropriate place – the vineyard doesn’t matter - and stabilisation doesn’t help. We need less industrialisation.

He sees the en rama wines as a positive step as they are better yet cheaper to produce. A specific vineyard origin gives further added value. He pointed out thata there are places where they value not only the vineyards but also the specific plot, and he would like to see wines where there is harmony between the soil and crianza. Sherry is now in a strategic situation for the remodelling of our 7,000 hectares to achieve higher quality permitting the recuperation of varieties of Palomino lost during the past century. This would bring with it the production of wine with real vineyard character.

“Wine: the result of Man working with Nature”. Luís said that wine is not a natural product as it wouldn’t exist without human intervention, yet humans could not make wine without Nature. Science has given us a more intimate understanding of Nature and thus a wiser and better balanced relationship. The more we work with nature the better and more individual the wine will be.

“The evocative power of wine, an icon of our culture.” Cultivating the vineyards so as to produce the best possible wine with marked personality is the aim. The better the raw material supplied to the bodegas the better the result. To achieve this, the grower should understand more about winemaking, and the winemaker should understand more about viticulture.

“When I look inside a glass of Sherry I think of it as the fruit of the light and heat of our sun, the water from our rain, the nature of our soil, the work, knowledge and love of our people. That glass of Sherry has everything to make us feel masters of our patrimony and is thus more than justifiably an icon of our culture.”