This was the nickname given to José
Ignacio Domecq González (1914-1997), one of the fourteen children born to
Manuel Domecq Nuñez de Villavicencio, Viscount of Almocadén, and Mercedes González
Gordon. This was a handsome, sporting, well educated family which spoke very good
English, and José Ignacio was a good example of this. He was tall, slim, dynamic,
intelligent and refined. During the
school holidays he had followed his father round the bodegas, watching what he
did and tasting after him, learning the trade. His early ideas of being in the
Navy came to nothing when the Naval Academy closed in 1931, and his industrial
engineering studies were cut short by the Civil War in which he fought. On his
return to Jerez he married Ángela Fernández de Bobadilla y González Abreu and
they had twelve children.
In 1939 he joined the family business,
which was fortuitous as he was gifted with a prodigiously sensitive hawklike nose
and fine oenological skills. He was well known for his ability to identify a brand
of perfume or soap from some distance away, and even once halted a tasting when
he detected the smell of chorizo on a waiters´s breath. On another occasion he
postponed a glass of Amontillado 51-1ª as he could smell his secretary´s nail
polish in the distance.
Needless to say his wine tasting
skills were legendary, and he could recognise every possible nuance, which was fitting
as a director of Pedro Domecq. He would go round the bodegas with his trusty
venenciador, Julio Delgado, and taste vast numbers of wines to give the
go-ahead for running the scales, and indeed is credited with tasting 45,000 in
a year – that´s over 120 a day, not to mention the thousands more he tasted in
the laboratory and sample room. He believed in following each wine´s progress
regularly and thus keeping his tasting skills well practised.
Some wondered about how much wine he must
have consumed, yet nobody ever saw him the worse for wear. Asked by a
journalist if he drank much, he replied that “I don´t know how much “much” is,
but I drink enough to satisfy my thirst”. And despite that, and always having a
cigarette in his hand, he lived to 82. When he was not at the bodega he would
often be travelling round the world promoting Sherry in general and Domecq in
particular while being a great aficionado and skilled blender of Jerez Brandy,
indeed he did much to create the huge Hispano-American markets.
José Ignacio often used to drive to
the bodegas on a little red Moto Guzzi motorcyle he had bought from his chauffeur,
and fixed to the rear was a box for his best friend “Paco”, his Jack Russell
terrier, who accompanied him almost everywhere, even to board meetings. The old
bike can be seen in the bodega´s museum. In 1994 Domecq was taken over by Allied Lyons
but José Ignacio still went daily to the bodega, the office and the laboratory
he had occupied for some 50 years until he was taken into hospital in December
1996, where he passed away the following January. Thus, one of the great Sherry
characters passed into legend, but his nephew, Beltrán Domecq y Williams,
chemist, oenologist, author of “Sherry Uncovered” and president of the Consejo
Regulador, is now flying the flag.
