Susan Sarandon drinks Sherry!

In a US TV series, The Big C, Susan Sarandon and a friend enjoy a proper aperitif! And they seem to be enjoying it quite a lot! The wine is Bodegas Dios Baco Oloroso, by the way. Sherry is definitely gaining some ground in the US, and this is just the sort of promotion it needs.

Many thanks to Jose Luis Jimenez Garcia! (jerezdecine.wordpress.com - excellent blog!)

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.

Andalucia Day

Tomorrow, the 28th February is El Dia de Andalucia. It is a public holiday throughout the region, and the date recalls the vote by the people of Andalucia on February the 28th 1980 to be a regional autonomy.

Andalucia is an important place: the world's largest producer of olives and olive oil; a massive fruit and vegetable producer; maker of many important wines including our beloved Sherry and also Malaga, Montilla and many others. It is a major tourist destination with world heritage sites. Andalucia invented Flamenco, and tapas. I can't imagine Heaven being much better!

The region consists of 8 provinces: Cadiz, Almeria, Malaga, Granada, Jaen, Huelva, Cordoba and Sevilla, where the regional government is established.

Somehow, only Andalucia could produce Sherry, and I would ask you all to raise a glass of it and drink "To Andalucia!"  "Viva Andalucia!"

Oloroso Urium 19%, Bodegas Urium

Appearance
Bright clean mahogany-amber through pale amber to slight trace of green at the rim, legs.
Nose
Aromatic and generous quite dry, but some implied sweetness follows through, very fine and elegant, traces of dry fruit cake, hazelnuts and walnuts, lightish but most attractive.
Palate
Very elegant, lightish and refined, lots of warm nutty flavours, even nut liqueur, perhaps a trace of polished furniture, long, dry with a trace of tannin but well rounded, beautifully balanced and delicious.
Comments
A really fine, elegant Oloroso. This is from the Classic range, after which they offer the VORS wines. It is undoubtedly from an old solera which the firm bought, but I know no more about it, except that it is lovely. As far as I am aware it is not imported into the UK. Sorry!

PX Royal Ambrosante VOS 17%, Sandeman

Appearance
Almost opaque black-brown to fading yellow rim with pronounced legs.
Nose
Very Jerez in style, seems fairly dry at first, but a certain sweetness with lots of raisin, fruit cake, damp barrels, coffee, treacle and a savoury element too, slight traces of Marmite and licorice, quite serious and old.
Palate
Full, rich, very sweet and luscious, lots of tangy raisin and a hint of date with all the texture you'd expect from dried fruit and just enough acidity for a clean finish, quite lively with traces of well-done toast and treacle. Long and delicious.
Comments
This is a VOS (Vinum Optimum Signatum) or a wine with a minimum of 20 years solera age. The solera was laid down in 1894, and all bottles (mostly halves) are numbered. It contains a modest 380g/l sugars and 4.5g/l tartaric acid which gives it tang and length.

Price

£13-15 per half bottle. UK importer Stephens Garnier

23.2.13 Various News Items

The XVII Festival de Jerez got underway last night with various flamenco acts with dancing, singing and music at the Villamarta Theatre. The Gala Inaugural was criticised for its length, partly for unnecessary extras, but was nonetheless a success, and a great start to the festival.

Garvey is selling its last two bodegas. The Complejo Bellavista and bodega Zoilo Ruiz Mateos will be sold together in the summer, although a price has not yet been fixed. In April it will be two years since the administration proceedings began, and a meeting will be held soon with management.

The actual owner of the bodegas, Angel de Cabo, through his company Back in Business, is in custody for suspected fraud concerning a travel agency business, and the possibility of him running Garvey and ZRM has been ruled out. The workforce, which has been much reduced over the last few years as the company’s debt spiralled to 250 million euros, along with the management, would like the business to be sold to someone who would continue it as it is.

According to accounts supplied by Back in Business, the value of the business minus its debt stands at a negative figure of 18 million euros if the distribution company Union de Grandes Bodegas is taken into account.

Meanwhile the Ruiz Mateos family, once owners of the bodegas as Nueva Rumasa, are being pursued through the courts. The labyrinthine nature of their affairs, however, will make it very difficult to secure convictions. In the family itself, everyone is falling out with each other and blaming each other while their creditors and investors will likely get nothing.

Ruiz Mateos and his six sons 

Lustau recently gave a tutored tasting of a range of its wines to students of the prestigious Oxford University Wine Society at Exeter College, founded in 1314. Around 50 students were given a talk about the bodega followed by a tasting of the wines by Federico Sanchez Pece, brand ambassador.

A Sherry Called BOB !

This was the cleverly named title of the following article in today's Diario de Jerez

The IDEA agency of the Junta de Andalucia has published a report into the situation of Sherry, its market and its future possibilities, and presented it to the last plenary session of the Consejo Regulador in January.

Alongside recommendations for opening new markets and making Sherry more accessible to younger consumers, the report revives the debate about the difficult co-existence of buyers’ own brands (BOB) and the bodegas’ own brands on one side, and on the other side the complexity of the plethora of styles of Sherry.

Much has been said about the BOB business to which bodegas have traditionally resorted to boost turnover as sales fell, but which had grave consequences for both the price and the image of Sherry. Despite the abandonment of BOB by one of the leading bodegas in recent years, it is BOB which provides the vast majority of exports to the traditional markets of the UK, Holland and Germany, at a price often of below one euro a bottle, and that damages the bodega brands.

BOB was the main reason for the massive fine of seven million euros imposed by the National Competition Commission on some Sherry shippers for an alleged cartel to assure dominant positions in the export markets.

In line with the report, sources in the Sherry sector agree that it is time the debate resurfaced, in order to avoid confusion. One suggestion is to mark bodega brands with the words “Jerez Superior”. While the report recommends simplification of the different styles of Sherry, this would not be easy, and in some cases would run against the Consejo’s own Reglamento.

The report notes that another thing holding back Sherry is the concentration on just a few markets which are not evolving and which generally prefer one style of wine, and recommends diversifying the range on offer. Spain drinks little else but Manzanilla; Britain little else but Cream and Medium, for example, but some bodegas have been trying to diversify.

Other recommendations are pretty obvious, such as creating and promoting brands; increasing public knowledge of the wines; concentrating more on the pouring trade; working on enotourism.

To sum up, the report, rather than coming up with new ideas, points up some questions which have never been resolved, mainly because of the tense and confrontational atmosphere between the bodegas and the producers over the many years of crisis. Now that there is interest again in Sherry, it is up to them to do the right thing.