Hello, Justin here.

Recently I took part in a sherry tasting where the subject of bottle-aged sherries came up. Now the dogma is Fino and Manzanilla do not age and should be drunk as soon after bottling as possible. At the tasting, one of the wines we tried was a Manzanilla, Bailaora, which had spent two years in bottle. It obviously wasn’t a “fresh” Manzanilla, but there was nothing bad about it. It was just different.

In his brilliant book “Sherry” Julian Jeffs is clearly of the opinion that Fino and Manzanilla styles deteriorate after bottling, perhaps we were just lucky at the tasting. However he also says:

“Strange things can happen when dry sherries are kept for a long time. In my own cellar I laid down some fine palo cortado rather more than thirty years ago. For the first three or four years it improved; then it went through a bad patch that lasted for six or seven years. After that it came out on the other side, showing great age and elegance that improved annually until the wine had about twenty-five years’ cellaring. Then it began to go off.”

Jeffs goes on to say that sweet sherries are more likely to improve with age, and that they tend to consume their sugar, eventually becoming completely dry. Even so, a hit or miss affair.

I got talking to Jan Pettersen, owner of Bodegas Rey Fernando de Castilla, about the bottle-aged Manzanilla I had tried and he quickly offered to let me compare his Amontillado bottled in 2002 with one bottled last week. What a great opportunity! As you …

In recent weeks, I have visited the Emilio Hidalgo bodega twice, and since their wines are so good, a post has become just about unavoidable. This is a small, truly independent, family-owned bodega. It was started by the Hidalgo family in the mid 1800s and is run by decedents of the founders brothers Fernando and Emilio Hidalgo and their cousin Juan-Manuel Hidalgo. The business remains at their original site, in the old centre of Jerez and the bodega is made up of a series of traditional, thick walled bodegas separated by “patios”. This is an age-old system. When a breeze moves over the buildings, cooler air sinks down into the patios and then through the open doors around them into the bodegas, while warm air inside the bodegas rises up into the high cathedral-like roof spaces. This is how the bodegas are kept cool, even when it is fiercely hot outside. The temperature can also be regulated by opening and closing doors or windows, so keeping the inside of the bodegas at a steady temperature, perfect for ageing the wine.

The first time I visited Emilio Hidalgo, with friends, we tried three of their wines. Their Fino “La Panesa”, an old Amontillado called “El Tresillo 1874″ and their well known Oloroso “Gobernador”. They are all worth seeking out, and no doubt their other wines are too. Germany is currently the main export market for Emilio Hidalgo, however if you are based in the States, their agent is Winebow, who should be able to help you locate a bottle or two.

At Emilio Hidalgo, I once again enjoyed a lively conversation with their American exporter, Peter De Trolio. Peter …

Where do I begin this rambling and nonsensical post, filled with random bits of information that don’t really deserve a full post onto themselves, but that still need to be said? Well, where else than our “Iberian Links Around the Web”! Similar to your kitchen junk drawer, this post is filled with interesting bits of information that you may not ever need, but may come in use when you least expect it.

The Sixth….Taste

Granted, although we don’t have Haley Joel Osment scaring us with his momentary episodes of seeing dead people, we can be equally freaked out the next time your buddy turns to you after drinking a glass of wine and says, “I’m not really getting a bitter flavor here, but maybe more of a calcium-y taste”. According to Science Daily, beyond sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (similar to savory), humans also have a sixth taste receptor for foods that taste, well, like calcium - a flavor bordering between sour and bitter. It explains why foods that are generally high in calcium such as bok choy, kale and collards, generally come off as bitter if not cooked in a few sticks of butter so that the calcium can bind to the fat cells; whereby, preventing you from tasting it. In relation to wine, it just may explain why some wines are described as more minerally/calcium-y, and can therefore, be monitored in order to obtain a better taste profile. Can you pick out the sixth calcium-y taste in a wine?

Hey, That’s What We Needed! Another Roadblock to Enjoying Sherry!

Chef Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck Restaurant in London, and scientist Professor Don Mottram of Reading …

Initially, I thought I would be the only person bringing sherry to the EWBC 2008 invitational tasting, but once things got going, I was pleased to see that some Osborne Fino Quinta and the Manzanilla and Fino from Equipo Navazos (Nos 7 and 8 ) had made an appearance. The more the merrier, as far as I was concerned. I think the guys from Vinustv provided the Navazos wines and that Osborne had sent a few bottles of Fino Quinta to Catavino.

Navazos are doing really interesting things, but this post is about the wines I took along, which were from Alvaro Domecq here in Jerez. A not insubstantial number of bottles where donated by Alvaro Domecq, and they also sent along a complimentary “copita”, the traditional sherry glass, for each of the participants. Generally, the Alvaro Domecq wines went down well with the EWBC participants, and I was glad of the opportunity to introduce Alvaro Domecq and sherry to those who did not already know either.

The wine
The soleras at Alvaro Domecq date back to 1800, when Antonio María de Aranda started a bodega in Jerez. His son, Fermín Aranda, a famous medical doctor, inherited the business, which subsequently became “Fermín Aranda”. Fermín, in turn, passed the bodega on to his daughter, Pilar Aranda, who inherited the business in 1946. She was a very successful Almacenista, holding her own in a man’s world and producing outstanding wines and vinegars. Almacenistas (from “almacenar”, which means “to store”) are very rare now, but in former times were a major part of the sherry trade. They aged wines in their …

Two weeks ago, after a very relaxing holiday in Galicia, we chose to make our way home to Jerez via Portugal, stopping off for two nights in Oporto on the way. I’ve been to where they make Madeira, I live where they make sherry but I had never been to Oporto, so this was an exciting opportunity to visit the place where they make Port. For me, the “traditional” fortified wines are madeira, sherry and port so in a way this completes the circle.

What struck me immediately on arriving at Vila Nova de Gaia, where all the port lodges are, was how geared up they are for visitors. This is starkly different to the experiences to be had at the sherry bodegas in Jerez. I’m being general here, so there are exceptions, but I think the sherry trade could learn a lot from their cousins in Portugal. But of course that’s only if the sherry trade sees any benefit in visitors to their bodegas. I often wonder if they really do.

If I were a winemaker and someone made the effort to turn up at my cellar door, interested in my product, I’d be more than happy to show them around, give them a taste and hopefully sell them a bottle or, even better, a case or two. Surely, that’s good PR? Is there any point in catering for wine tourism? Is it worth opening up to visitors? Actions speak louder than words, so the port companies obviously think wine tourism is a …