Do you know your Fino from your Manzanilla? Or your Amontillado from your Oloroso? If you were among the 40 Stumperlowe Probus Club members and guests who enjoyed fellow member David Westaway’s comprehensive masterclass – not to mention the delicious Spanish-style tapas that accompanied the tastings – then you will almost certainly now know the difference.
In this addition to our programme at Fulwood Sports Club, David ran through the history of sherry, and the differences in the various classifications, and explained why only grapes grown within the famous Triangle qualify to be called sherry.
The Triangle is an area formed by the city of Jerez de la Frontera and the nearby coastal towns of El Puerto de Santa Maria and Sanlucar de Barrameda, with Jerez being by far the largest of the three, with a population of around 220,000.
To be called sherry, the wines must be produced in this area under the Denominaciones de Origen Jerez-Xéres-Sherry, so named because the wines, Vinos de Jerez, were popular not just in Spain, but also in France, Xérès and England. As sherry was widely copied, the DO proclaimed the exclusive rights to the name in all languages where the wine was being replicated.
The area exhibits a number of special characteristics including climate, location and soil, all of which combine to make the Triangle ideally suited to sherry production.
The area boasts over 300 days of sunshine per year to ripen the vines – summers can often reach temperatures in excess of 40 deg C. It also has a rainfall of up to 24 inches a year, mainly between November and March. But despite summers being fiercely hot, irrigation of the vineyards is banned at any time of year. The only water available throughout the year is rain, of which there is precious little during the summer months. So how do the vines survive such hostile conditions?
The answer lies in the Albariza soil, which could be said to be the most important feature of the area, such is its crucial role and without which sherry production might well not be possible. Translated as “white earth”, albariza is a chalky soil formed from the sedimentation of silica from diatomite and radiolite fossils (algae and organisms with a silica shell) millions of years ago, when Jerez was under water. It is rich in calcium carbonate, clay and silica.
David’s presentation, and the evening, was topped off with a delicious serving of vanilla ice cream drowned in Pedro Ximenez, the richest and sweetest sherry of them all, although many people lingered over drinks to make this an extremely sociable ending to our 2024 programme.