Sherry’s Golden Triangle
To drive along the three sides of the so-called Golden Triangle of Southern Andalucia is to realise just how much sherry wine shapes this landscape, where the vine has been grown for the last 3,000 years.
Since the Phoenicians brought the grape to southern Spain in about 1100BC from Canaan, vines have taken to – and taken over – this unique region. It is a baked land of low rolling hills, each crowned with a blazing white building, a ranch or vineyard, that would be equally at home on some burning Greek island.
The effect of burning and blazing is enhanced by the dazzling white soil, a type named albariza which is unique to this small region of Spain and which is one part of the peculiar natural equation that at the end of the season produces sherry. And from 1996, only wine produced here from this earth is entitled to bear the name of sherry, the word itself coming from the Arabic name for the city we now call Jerez: Sherish. Jerez de la Frontera is one corner of the triangle, an inland town whose coastal equivalents are Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa Mariá.
Between them lies that dazzling albariza, once an inland sea and now rich in silica, clay and calcium, the debris of seashells, urchins and starfish. The white slopes are slashed by lines of green vines, a modern inland sea that rolls away to the horizon and the blue-as-ink sky up above it. The albariza is not only rich, though, as it has another feature that nourishes the vines.
The rain here in Spain falls mainly in the winter, in short, heavy bursts, but when Spring arrives the land starts to bake – it’s only sixty miles from Jerez to Tangier – with temperatures rising to 40C (104F) in midsummer. The white sheet of soil reflects the heat and also contracts, sealing in the winter rain to water the vine’s roots. So it is that the main sherry grape, the palomino, which produces poor quality wines everywhere else in the world, here creates enough good juice to keep the world supplied with sherry: about 100 million bottles a year.
Where the arable land gives way to the rural edges of small towns, the hill might be topped with the formidable black bull, the symbol of the Osborne company. So much is this now seen as part of the land that when the Spanish government tried to get the metal structures removed, there was an outcry and the bulls remain, albeit with the white painted word OSBORNE removed from their flanks.
The Osborne bodega, or cellar, is in El Puerto de Santa Mariá, and is one of many in the district that opens its doors to the public to give tours and tastings. But even here, in the middle of towns, the bodegas dominate the look of the place. The scale is hard to imagine, their bright white walls running for several blocks, and inside are shaded courtyards, palm trees, gardens, offices and dozens of separate bodegas – for a bodega is an individual cellar, as well as a collection of them. Not an underground cellar, but a beautiful and breathtaking combination of cathedral and warehouse, where as many as 60,000 barrels may be stored.
Sherry takes at least three years to mature, and a company such as Gonzalez Byass, makers of the world’s leading brand, Tip Pepe, hold almost 100 million litres of sherry in stock: different brands at different stages, all in different dark bodegas. Ceilings are arched and walls are high, the glassless windows small and covered in sacking. This keeps sunlight out and lets air in, but keeps moisture in to help with humidity.
The humidity encourages the growth of the flor, the yeast that forms on the surface of all sherries except oloroso, sealing them in, preventing oxidation and adding to each sherry’s particular flavour. This is why, when opened, all sherries except oloroso will only keep for as long as any other wine. Oloroso, having already reacted with oxygen, will last for up to two years.
The Spaniards despair of other countries’ sherry-drinking habits. Lots of us buy it, but only once or twice a year at Christmas and special occasions. Once opened, we leave the bottle for several months awaiting another excuse to drink it. We store it in a sideboard or drinks cupboard rather than the fridge, which speeds its destruction, and in any case sherries such as fino and manzanilla should be served chilled. When we do drink it, we use the wrong-shaped glasses, as sherry should be savoured in a tulip-shaped glass, or at least an ordinary white wine glass, not the meagre cup-shaped glasses often used.
And, worst of all, we simply don’t drink enough of it. Sweet or dry, pale or dark, we sip one glass as an aperitif and forget it for the rest of the meal. In fact an amontillado will accompany white meat, such as turkey, while a nutty oloroso (the name means ‘fragrant’) goes well with red meat. Crisp finos and manzanillas suit fish – the Japanese drink sherry with sushi.
Manzanilla sherry can only be made in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the small coastal resort that neighbours the Coto Doñana National Park. The flor here is affected by the moist Atlantic air, and gives the straw-coloured manzanilla a slight tang of salt. Yet such is the delicate balance of the micro-climate, that manzanilla cannot be produced using identical wine and conditions just a few miles along the coast at El Puerto de Santa Mariá. If a barrel develops its flor in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and is then taken an hour’s drive north to Seville, the flor dies and the sherry with it. Not only does sherry shape the landscape, the landscape also shapes the sherry.