Jerez Wine

Old: Books from the past often have something interesting lurking in their pages, so I enjoy looking through them, trying to discover these little gems. An English friend, who has lived in Jerez since 1968 and deals in antiques, recently gave me a copy of “Wines of the World” edited by André Simon to have a look at. This particular copy was printed in 1967 and priced at £5/5/-.

Mr Simon was a legend in the wine world a generation back; writer, critic, wine merchant, gourmet. There is a food and drink writing prize in his name and he also founded the “Wine and Food Society“, which continues to this day.

Naturally I delved straight into the section on Sherry, contributed by George Rainbird in this edition. He describes sherry as the greatest jewel in the crown of Spanish wine, but considering my earlier post it was fascinating to read these words:

“At least two of the Jerez bodegas do not fortify their wines at all for the domestic market, and do it for the English market only to enable the wines to travel. The resulting finos are extremely delicate and fine, and while it might be a degree or so below standard alcoholic strength, it is certainly a delicious wine. The odd thing about it is that I find this practice of making unfortified sherry universally denied throughout Spain; yet I know it to exist, and I personally like the natural wine very much indeed.”

And now for something new: This piece today shows South Africa is certainly taking bloggers seriously. I wouldn’t mind doing some of the things they will be getting up to, least of all hanging out with the guys from Stormhoek.

Interesting story doing the rounds today about Threshers and Cobra Beer teaming up to write a Facebook app.

In my dreams would a sherry bodega try a stunt like this, most of them don’t even know what “the book” is!

All I can do is keep hoping and trying to spread the Web 2.0 word.
Ryan and Gabriella over at Catavino have certainly been at it…

When Spain joined the EU it was required to bring spanish wine law into line with EU law. This resulted in the classification of sherry as a “liqueur wine”, with a legal minium alcohol content of 15%.

This gave and continues to give rise to two serious problems for the trade.

1. Quality: Flor eats up alcohol, so even though Finos and Manzanillas are fortified to about 15% to start with, this often comes down to 14% and even lower after years of ageing under flor. After ageing the wines are often perfect as they are, but cannot be sold as Sherry until they have been re-fortified to 15%. This unnessesary addition of alcohol can unbalance the wine, damaging its quality and also deny Fino and Manzanilla the abililty to compete directly with “light” wines which sometimes have alcohol levels approaching 15%.

2. Tax: The duty on wine in the UK, Sherry’s largest market, is banded with one watershed being 15%. Duty on wines above 15% is significantly higher than duty on “light” wines, directly affecting the price of Sherry on the shelf. Duty on a 15% Fino is nearly a third more than on a 14% “light” wine. Labeling and tax is also affected in the States, and no doubt in a whole lot of other jurisdictions. Pretty unfair if you ask me.

Finally, 22 years after Spain joined the EU it seems something is being done. I’m not really sure I should be surprised that it’s taken so long. For all the synergies the European project is supposed to bring, one thing it does bring is an enourmous pile of red tape for anyone trying to do anything. Still, is TWO decades not a bit long?

Story here in the Diario de Jerez (in Spanish).

They are also going to try and get the rules for PX changed so that it doesn’t even need fortification, with minimum alcohol as low as 12%.

I thought I’d put links to all the WBW #51 posts I could find here. Host first and then in no particular order:

1winedude
1winedude (theme post)

I just wrote a post for Wine Blogging Wednesday over at Catavino.

http://www.catavino.net/portugal/wbw-51-baked-goods-and-madeirized-wine/#more-2412