The Oldest Bodega in the West

At a Fiestas de la Vendimia event at the Consejo Regulador last week, professor of prehistory at Cádiz University Diego Ruiz Mata discussed his discovery of an ancient bodega at Doña Blanca. The ruins of this walled Phoenician town lie a little east of El Puerto de Santa María, in the Sierra de San Cristóbal. It dates back to the third millennium BC, during the Bronze Age, and in those days dominated the Guadalete estuary, a perfect site for defence, fishing and trade. The estuary began to silt up however and after the Roman victory in the Punic Wars the town, now lying a bit over a mile from the river, was only inhabited again sporadically till the Middle Ages and eventually abandoned.

In 1991 Ruiz Mata and his team excavated a 2,000 metre area just below the top of the hill and discovered the remains of a winemaking site dating from the fourth century BC, the only one of this age to be discovered preserved in its entirety, and the oldest in the West. There are two troughs for treading the grapes, another to receive the juice, a storage area for amphorae of wine, ovens for making sweet wine and three temples which have caused a bit of a sensation in the scientific world as they reveal a religious connection to wine.

From its beginnings, wine was highly valued for its flavour and its psychotropic properties which quickly found religious uses as its effects were thought to bring people closer to a divinity and these “libations” soon took over from psychotropic herbs. It naturally had other social and commercial uses, but was always a very exclusive drink as the technology did not then exist to produce large quantities, so it was rare and extremely expensive, being used only at special events. One of the temples has a pit for offerings from which numerous broken cups and amphorae have been recovered, thrown there during ritual feasts. Sacred stones were also discovered which refer to the presence of a divinity. 

After examining the site in minute detail, the archaeologists had the site re-buried as without proper protection it would end up being destroyed since, as Ruiz Mata says; it is lamentable how Spain neglects important parts of its heritage. (Only last week part of the Medieval Torre de Melgarejo near Jerez – which is a protected building – collapsed). Doña Blanca gets its name from a medieval tower near the Phoenician remains and where Doña Blanca de Borbon was imprisoned by Pedro I in the XIV century.

Whisky from the Marco de Jerez?

Towards the end of the XIX and beginning of the XX centuries the bodegas were selling all sorts of products as well as Sherry. The wine of Jerez was beginning to recover after the Phylloxera crisis had forced them to sell other products to survive. All sorts of drinks were produced like Ponche, Quina, Vermouth, Brandy, Gin, Anís etc., and in the days before DOs, many had very questionable labelling, such as “Cognac”, “Ojén” and “Rum”. Two even produced “Whiskey”.

José de la Cuesta (est. 1849) El Puerto de Santa María

Not only can it not “Scotch” being, as the label says, “Spanish produce”, but it is wrongly spelled for Scotch. In Scotland it is always spelled “Whisky”. Whiskey is the Irish and American spelling. Whisk(e)y can be produced anywhere, but “Scotch Whisky” can only be distilled, aged and bottled in Scotland. Furthermore the label clearly states that it is made from rectified alcohol (ie distilled to within an inch of its life in a column still) produced from grapes, as opposed to the cereals used to make Whisky. Its only saving grace would have been the seasoned Sherry barrels it was aged in. So as fakes go this one was not difficult to spot. The firm is now part of Luis Caballero.

José de Soto (est. 1793) Jerez

In the mid 1930s this very reputable bodega introduced its own “Whiskey” at the reasonable price of 6.50 pesetas the bottle.  It was “specially made and aged in rigorously selected oak barrels which had contained the oldest Sherries”. The brand was offered in two versions: the standard “Tip Top Choice old Whiskey” with a gold label and the black-labelled version which was supposedly better still. Unfortunately, by the time it was launched the Civil War was at its height, and the product was soon dropped. What it was made from is a mystery, but it is highly likely that, like the Cuesta “Whiskey”, it was in fact brandy. At least Soto did not have the temerity to call it “Scotch” and made much of the fact that it was Spanish.

In both cases, the product probably never left Spanish shores, and has long since disappeared, which is just as well, but from an academic point of view it would be very interesting to taste them. Nevertheless, some very good and perfectly genuine Whisky is produced in Spain nowadays. The big one is DYC (Destilerías y Crianzas del Whisky) which was established in 1955 near Segovia, and has successfully produced Malts and blends since then.  It now belongs to Beam Suntory. Then there is Destilerías Liber in Granada who distil various spirits including the Single Malt Embrujo. Last but, I’m afraid least, is Pernod Ricard’s Doble V distilled near Tarancón and also Argentina. It was set up by Hiram Walker in the early 1970s.

Brandy Conde de los Andes Solera Gran Reserva 40%, Marcos Eguizábal

Appearance
Deep brown to mahogany to amber at the rim with cooper highlights.
Nose
Full and quite intense with strong Oloroso notes and perhaps a little PX. You can smell the texture imparted by old Sherry barrels along with hints of vanilla, walnut and toasted almonds. It is rich and generous with hints of antique furniture, brown sugar, caramel and oak, but all in harmony.
Palate
Again full bodied, rich, and fairly powerful, with all the above and mellowed only slightly by gentle sweet notes of caramel, cinder toffee, dried fig and date. It really speaks of the quality of the butts it has been aged in; you can almost chew the oak, yet it is not particularly tannic and leaves a concentrated  Sherried intensity which lasts for ages. Impressive stuff.
Comments

The title Conde de los Andes was granted in 1824 by King Fernando VII to reward the work of the viceroy of Peru, José de la Serna y Martínez de Hinojosa, who came from Jerez. In 1924 the title was elevated to Grande de España, the highest level of nobility below royalty. Unlike this noble lineage, the brandy of that name has a complicated history. It was originally a fine brandy solera, established in 1819 and bought by Díez Hermanos which itself was bought by Rumasa in 1972 and later bought Marqués del Mérito. It was then merged with Zoilo Ruiz Mateos in 1984. When the Spanish Government sold off the various parts of Rumasa in 1985, a Riojan businessman called Marcos Eguizábal bought Díez Mérito, Bertola and Pemartín as well as the once great Rioja bodega Federico Paternina. He re-named the top Rioja wines and the top Jerez Brandy Conde de los Andes. There was also once a Conde de los Andes Brandy Liqueur which was a solera-aged blend of Brandy and PX presented in a similar bottle but with a white label and silver capsule. After Eguizábal’s death his family sold the Jerez interests to the local Espinosa family who have dropped the Conde de los Andes name and now sell the brandy at 15, 25 and 35 years of average age along with a tiny release (100 bottles per annum) of it at 100 years from 14 selected botas “no” and called Reserva Especial.

Price
45 euros, Mantequeria Jerezana

Blanco Hornillos 2017 12.5%, Viña Callejuela

Appearance
Paleish strawy silvery gold with golden glints.
Nose

Fresh, pure and faintly yeasty with delicate apple, pear and apricot fruit and traces of fresh herbs like camomile, and white flowers, almost like walking through an orchard to a meadow in fresh slightly maritime air. There are hints of salinity and chalky soil too. Attractive, delicate and refined.

Palate

A little more weight now, and some more apple, there is a decent refreshing acidity making it almost crisp and plenty of tangy fruit flavour along with a hint of salinity and a slight chalky feel which slightly blunts the acidity, and a faint bitterness at the long clean finish. A charming and very drinkable wine.

Comments

This is a straightforward white wine from Callejuela's Hornillos vineyard in Sanlúcar which surrounds the bodega. It is 100% Palomino fermented in tank where it is allowed to decant after the malo-lactic. It has no flor, no oak, no ageing, as none of these are necessary to produce a decent white wine. What it does have is a certain flavour of the albariza soil and the environment of the Guadalquivir estuary along with the fruit of perfectly ripened grapes. This is exactly the same wine which will be fortified to feed the Manzanilla criaderas, and it amazing how its flavour can still be detected in the Manzanilla as it ages. The Blanco brothers are "mayetos" as they call growers in Sanlúcar, and want their wines to reflect the vineyards they are so proud of. Good price too for a wine with real character.

Price
6.95, De Albariza

 

Bodegas: José de la Cuesta

José de la Cuesta y Gómez del Corral was born in Torrelavega near Santander in 1824. In search of his fortune, he moved to El Puerto de Santa María and set up a wine business in 1849 which would become very successful. His son, Luís de la Cuesta, later took over the business and in 1894 bought the bodegas of Englishman John William Burdon, established in 1821, when Burdon, who had no children to leave his business to, retired back to England. Cuesta maintained the bodegas and their brands.

José Cabaleiro do Lago, also from the North of Spain, Galicia in fact, established wineries in Chipiona as an offshoot to the family oak timber business in Galicia but gradually became more involved with vineyards, Sherry and distillation. His firm, now called Luis Caballero, decided to move to El Puerto during the early XX century, and the simplest means of doing this was to buy existing bodegas, so in 1932, the firm bought those of José de la Cuesta, located not far from the Castle and those of John William Burdon, already owned by Cuesta.

A bottle from the 1960s

This move gave Caballero considerably increased stock and allowed him to export in a bigger way. Apart from its own Fino Pavón, Caballero has continued selling Burdon and Cuesta brands to this day but effectively as sous-marques and on certain markets. Burdon is available in Taiwan and Luxemburg while Cuesta is available in markets like Germany and Ireland, simply labelled Cuesta. In 1990 what was by now Grupo Caballero bought Emilio Lustau, based in Jerez, who market Puerto Fino from Burdon/Cuesta soleras and Fino del Puerto from an old Cuesta solera of 183 butts in the Lustau Almacenista range.

Cuesta was well known for its Troubadour range and also sold Oloroso Melisa, Cream Preferido, Amontillado Queen, Cuesta Moscatel and Vasco Pale Sherry, Ponche Cuesta, Anís, Quina and even a “Scotch Whiskey”. They also did quite well for a while with that British fascination with ceramic Sherry “barrels” with a tap, which could be kept on the sideboard or in the kitchen and which held around 2 gallons (equivalent to 12 bottles). Thankfully they are now consigned to antique shops.

A bottle from the current range

4.9.18 González Byass Restoring PX Lagar

González Byass has decided to make its own Pedro Ximénez again and to that end has embarked on a project to refurbish the old winery at their Viña Canariera in the pago Carrascal which hasn’t been used since the 1980s. The firm has some 27 hectares of PX in its Viña Esteve and Viña Canariera vineyards and, along with Ximénez Spínola, must be almost the only producers of it left in Jerez. GB expects to process 10,000 kilos a day of sunned PX grapes over which they will have 100% control from vine to glass.

PX has been grown in the Marco de Jerez for some 500 years, usually on the lower albariza slopes. While it has been used traditionally to make dry wines as well as sweet (though mostly the latter), it requires more work and gives lower yields than Palomino which, along with falling demand for sweet wines has led to its decline, and it now accounts for only about 3% of the vines planted on albariza. The climate in Jerez is a little too humid for PX, and growers have to worry not only about the weather during the growing season, but also that during the sunning of the grapes which can last up to three weeks.

For many years now, the tradition has been to buy young PX wine from Montilla-Moriles and age it through soleras in Jerez, and the longer the ageing the more different the wine becomes,  so this is permitted by the Consejo Regulador. Montilla-Moriles is in the province of Córdoba where the climate is drier and hotter and the soils are also albariza, so it is the perfect place to grow PX. These days many are thinking however, that Sherry should be 100% Jerez, hence the talk about a distillery.

2.9.18 Exciting New Launches from Fernando de Castilla and González Byass

Some cracking new releases are due in the near future, hopefully in time for the Christmas season. No photos are available yet I'm afraid.

Bodegas Fernando de Castilla have managed to obtain very small quantities of a couple of very old wines. There are only three butts of each, so the wine will be sold in half bottles made from heavy black glass and will be marketed as The Singular Collection. They will probably be launched in September. These stunning wines, which are both over 80 years old, are an incredibly aromatic and concentrated Oloroso Viejísimo which colours the glass for a while, and a Pedro Ximénez Viejísimo which colours it for even longer. It has 650 g/l sugars yet is beautifully balanced.

González Byass will be launching two vintage (añada) Finos in the near future. No launch date has yet been set as there still matters to be seen to, but the wines will be from the 2010 and 2011 vintages; one from the pago Carrascal and the other from the Pago Macharnudo. This will offer consumers an insight into variations in character created by the different vintages and the different terroirs of the vineyards. The wines will be released in pairs of half bottles, one of each, in a pack containing information about the harvest conditions of each year. The pack will form part of the recently launched Vinos Finitos range of wines which are irrepeatable, spearheaded by the Oloroso Alfonso 1/6 and the ancient Moscatel Pio X. Only 700 packs of the Finos will be released.