Been a couple of months now and I still don’t know what to say or where to start.

First there are all the victims. Far far too many people have been taken by this terrible virus. The numbers are unimaginable. Today over a hundred had died in Spain and by comparison that was considered good news. 496 deaths on one day in England only made page 4 of one egregious newspaper. And the totals, even manipulated as they have been by governments more concerned with public opinion than public safety, are staggering. What is worse, every one of those too easily spun numbers is a person, a parent or a grandparent, a husband, wife, brother and sister, son or daughter, and perhaps most tragically doctor, nurse, hospital porter, ambulance driver, policeman, fireman, bus driver or other public servant. It is hard to imagine their suffering or that of their families, and it is just heartbreaking that there are so many.

Second, those front-line workers. Hard to put words to the respect, admiration and gratitude felt for all the workers putting themselves in harm’s way for our sake. One hopes that their contribution will not be forgotten and that they will get their reward at the end of this – it is absolutely clear that they deserve so much more than they get now.

And just behind the doctors and nurses are untold numbers of anonymous heroes: shelf stackers, checkout girls and guys, truck drivers, delivery men and women, bus drivers, police officers and so many others that have not stopped and whose efforts have meant that life could go on even when the world was falling on our heads. In particular I cannot but remember the tech team, the messenger and repro departments, cleaners and security that have kept my own office ticking over and made it possible for me, my own team, and the whole firm to work from home.

But as grateful as I am to those that have kept working my heart also goes out to those that have not been able to, and in particular all those restaurants, taverns, bars of all shapes and sizes, and all their suppliers, the distributors and bodegas. A lot of sectors have been hammered in the last several months and I spend a lot of my time speaking to companies that are fighting daily to hold things together, but I really just don’t know what to say to my many friends in the restaurant and wine businesses.

Possibly closest to my heart are the winemakers and their distributors and there is no over estimating the challenge that they face. It is heartening to see that off-licence sales of wine have increased more rapidly than sales of beer in the period everything has been closed but even if they had tripled, cuadrupled, they would not make up for the loss of sales through restaurants. Forget your plans for a beach body – summer is cancelled this year. Instead, keep buying wine, enjoying wine at dinner and lunch, and breakfast and afternoon tea if necessary – a glass of bubbles with your cucumber sandwiches, Fortnum’s style.

Because for restaurants, well I cannot imagine what it must be like to see a thriving business, that you have spent years building up in the most competitive market possible taken to the cleaners by a natural phenomenon on this scale. I cannot imagine how hard it must be, when you have spent years in the business of making people feel at home, to have to get on your motorbike and take them the food there. And I cannot imagine how it must feel right now to all those friends who have made a career in table service, making a connection with customers and helping create the unforgettable experiences that are the real objective of the restaurant business. It must be simply heartbreaking, and I wish I could offer some kind of solace.

I am lost in admiration for the many businesses that are fighting it out and making huge changes to their lives. My neighbour, Pepe Moran of de la Riva, has been an inspiration, my good friends at Zalamero Taberna sent us a sensational dinner home on their first day back and the other day I ordered a takeaway from Trifiker and, when I went to give the rider a couple of euros tip discovered it was Trifón himself! (And there are many more – I only have one stomach but will get myself sorted with a post soon.)

And the impact on the wine business is also severe. Wine is one of the great ingredients of the great experience of dining out, and one where restaurants, taverns, bars and the rest, and most importantly the sommeliers, waiters and maitres d’ play an outsized role in educating us and encouraging us to find those wines, those pairings that can make a good dinner great, and a lovely evening special.

My enjoyment of wine is so bound up with epic lunches and dinners in the many outstanding restaurants in Madrid that at times I find it hard to distinguish one from the other. This blog would not exist and would not make sense without Madrid’s restaurants, bars, taverns, vinotecas and botellerias, and so many wines – particularly sherry wines – are only accessible in the special venues that feature on these pages.

But way upstream from the urbane sommelier who opens our eyes and wallets are the growers – the people that plant, tend, and harvest the magic bushes of vitis vinifera that are the heart of the whole business. For some of them, the decrease in sales caused by this virus can mean a loss of a year’s, or even a lifetime’s work.

It is vital that we keep drinking, keep buying wine, that we order food (and wine) from our favourite restaurants, and that we do everything in our power to keep these wonderful flames alive. All our lives would be so much the poorer without them.

But more importantly, their lives have already been turned upside down, and obstacles we cannot imagine have been put in the way of people who had already overcome enough barriers for several lifetimes.

I promise that I will do what I can to keep consuming, and to keep encouraging consumption, and I hope that the many friends that have done so much to contribute to my enjoyment and passion over the years know that if I can help in any way – any way at all – they only need to contact me. Stand by me.

The coravin is not something you write about often in sherry circles – sherry wines frequently have screw caps, or media tapones, or other closures, and even if they didn’t sherry wines are generally unbreakable under oxygen, whether for their powerful vinous frame or because they have been so long exposed to the elements, making the coravin unnecessary.

The coravin is nevertheless a fantastic invention. It’s cunning argon gas powered system allows top restaurants to sell us their most treasured wines by the glass and takes some of the guesswork about our own cellaring. But it really comes into its own when, say, it falls into the hands of a guy with a big, well stocked cellar of fantastic wines, fantastic knowledge acquired over many years of consumption and the kind of analytical approach to life for which horizontal and vertical tastings were invented.

Which is why Cora-the-explorer.com is such cracking news for the internet, wine lovers, and wine in general for the stars have in fact aligned in just this manner.

In the interest of objectivity I should declare that I have known the author for going on 20 years and have benefitted enormously over that time from his cellar and generosity. Having said that, it also means I can bear witness: I have seen this man “tasting” wines in depth and on numerous occasions, and while I do not have his breadth of knowledge I can also certify that in relation to those wines I do know a lot about he is fundamentally sound. You could not find a better bloke to drink wines with, to talk about wines with, or to learn from and I wholeheartedly recommend following Cora the Explorer on her travels.

 

A lot of nice sherries around these days: the sherry lists in restaurants are getting longer and longer and it sometimes feels as if there is a never ending supply line of new labels and brands. Some of them are from smaller bodegas and almacenistas that have decided, given the increased interest of the public, to sell their own wine rather than sell it to bigger houses. But others are, quite literally, old wines in new bottles.

It all started, of course, with Equipo Navazos, who in just over 12 years since December 2005 have released no less than 80 such wines. Since then though the marketplace for this kind of “marquista” wine (wine from one origin and sold under a different brand, or “marca”) has become crowded indeed. Names that spring to mind include Antonio Barbadillo’s Sacristia AB, Roberto Amillo’s Selección, the wines bottled by Alexander Jules, and most recently Las Botas.

And those are just the “marquistas”. There are more and more “selections” in general and the latest trend is for restaurants: Lustau and Aponiente have teamed up to release wines under the “Yodo” brand, Albert Adría and Gonzalez Byass have come up with “la Cala” while I was told on a recent trip up North that Nerua and Mugaritz also have their very own manzanillas, finos and all sorts. A recent high point was when I tried a manzanilla in Madrid that had been barrel selected for a wine bar … in San Sebastian!

Some of these guys – Equipo Navazos in particular – have done a grand job selling these wines around the world and educating critics and collectors in the English speaking world in particular. It is no surprise that they are highly thought of: they have quite literally created a market, and in my view have been instrumental in reviving international interest in the wines of the region. Neither do I see any problem in principle with using successful brands – be it Mugaritz or Aponiente, or Essencia or whoever, to boost the sales and awareness of these wines.

There are some drawbacks with the sheer number of selections you find around the place. It makes things tricky for the critics, who have been known to score the “marquista” selections higher than the original wines (by as many as three points in the familiar 80-100 scale) to widespread chagrin, incredulity, and elevation of eyebrows. More worryingly, the marquista wines may be crowding out the “real wines” when it comes to international recognition or even at those same tastings (I recently saw a lineup of a tasting that had been organized where no fewer than four of the eight wines were marquistas). Also on the negative side, these special selection wines tend to be candidates for the more “imaginative” kind of marketing and can feed into a “stamp collecting” mindset.

And maybe the glory years of the marquistas are over to an extent: with the pick up in interest for these wines there are not as many forgotten botas or bodegas that don’t have their own route to market. But neither are they going away any time soon, and if the bodegas don’t want to live permanently in their shadow maybe the solution is to learn from them.

Most fundamentally, it may be time to recognize that not all the botas in the solera are the same, and for the bodegas to take advantage of that fact for themselves. I have often said that one of the secrets to the Equipo Navazos success story is the limited edition nature of their wines, and you can see now how different bodegas are trying to emulate that, with “single cask” and special “bota NO” releases. Also, the marquistas, and again Equipo Navazos are the leading example, are often better at explaining what makes their wines special than the bodegas are and that too can be learned from.

But neither is it true that these special selections are always better than the original. I am the sort of contrary soul that orders the selection and the standard side by side and can tell you that the standard often wins. And let’s not forget that there would be nothing to select, and bottle, and explain, and market around the world if it weren’t for the bodegas. The bodegas are the true keepers of the flame, they are the ones making the wines and the people that, ultimately, are paying for the party with their massive investment in the productive “assets” that are their soleras and cellars.

So enjoy the special selections by all means, but never forget where they came from.

 

 

I get asked quite often what my favourite sherries are and find it very hard to narrow it down to less than twenty or so. But in a few words, the wines that interest me most are the wines that are authentic both in the sense of expressing their time, their place, or their upbringing, and, most importantly, in the sense of being what they say they are.

Because, unfortunately, the more you learn about the wines of el marco the harder it can be to keep believing everything you are told.

First, and whether it is biological or oxidative ageing, there is a tendency to exaggerate the amount of the ageing. The Consejo Regulador do a great job with the VOS and VORS classification, but 30 years now seems to have become the minimum age for an old sherry. In fact if your wine isn’t 50 years old (not certified by anyone) you aren’t anyone, and it seems like every year the wines get older. I was told recently that a wine was an average age of 83 years (which seemed suspiciously specific) and there is more than one wine out there the given age of which is a straight-up fairy tale.

A lot of this ties in with the blarney and the poetry that abounds in the region (it can often seem people are more interested in drinking “history” than drinking wine) but it is a bit unedifying when you keep getting told ever higher ages for the same wines. And neither is it a problem that is unique to the old olorosos and amontillados (let’s not get into the “mystery” of the palo cortados). The number of amazingly youthful-tasting 10+ year old finos and manzanilla pasadas is remarkable, and some of them are getting older as we speak. In one particularly egregious example I was given a new bottling taken from a classic solera I know well, and even asked for a glass of the original alongside to appreciate if there were any differences (not that I could tell). Up to there I was quite happy, but then I was told that the first criadera had four more years under flor than the original wine from the solera, which made my head hurt a little bit.

On the other hand, and more recently, as interest in pagos and vineyards begins to take hold there is more and more talk of long-established wines being from X pago or Y pago, in prime terroir and harvested by hand, when only a couple of years ago the same bodegas had told me that the wine had come from a variety of sources or even the cooperative (a cooperative, moreover, that does not source its wine from the afore-mentioned prime terroir). Now in fairness I have also learned that there are bodegas out there – more than you would think – that do source from a single vineyard and have every right to put the name of the pago on the label. I certainly wouldn’t discourage them from doing so or suggest that all new labellings of this kind are misleading, but I worry sometimes that we may end up with more asparagus than Tudela.

And these are only two of the more harmless worries. Under the foggy miasma of blarney and poetry there are whispers of darker deeds: wines being secretly touched up with something sweet to make them a little more amenable on the palate (pedro ximenez or moscatel if you are lucky), or having something very old/concentrated added to make them seem older, or something very dark to make them look as if they have been longer in the barrel. You even hear of wines from bodegas in less fashionable areas of el marco being sold as remnants of cellars with much swankier addresses. The worst of it is that you hear the whispers so often: one very respected maker told me that he believed his to be the only bodega in the region that did not spice up the wines (I don’t believe him, but he seemed to believe it).

And when you think about the recent history of the region it is really not surprising. The fortification, the solera, selection, roceo and cabeceo, all seem designed to correct nature’s variations, while all too scant attention has been paid to the raw materials. It is a philosophy geared more towards manufacturing wines than growing them. One of the more telling comments I have heard recently was the reaction of a very high profile wine maker to the suggestion that single vintage, single vineyard wines were the way forward: “the problem is that you have to be careful right from the being to the end”. The implication, of course, is that you don’t with the solera wines because the solera is much more forgiving (and of course it is).

This isn’t to say that the cellar produced wines cannot be great. Some of my very favourite producers do not own vineyards, buying wine in and doing absolute wonders in the cellar. Neither do I believe for a moment that all these wines are adulterated. But even if they aren’t juiced up, the cellar produced wines can almost be programmed to have certain characteristics: acetaldehide in the biological wines, volatile and other acidity in the oxidated wines, old barrel effects across the board. As one brilliant maker puts it, flor is the oak of the sherry region, and when overdone it becomes the oak chips.

Biological and oxidative ageing can produce wines of stunning beauty and complexity but with the great power that these processes give the winemakers comes great responsibility. And while every wine making region in the world has its issues, and the sherry region is probably no worse than anywhere else, in a region where wines are continually being mixed and processed, it is crucial to be disciplined and transparent in those mixes and processes.

So these days I am less interested in the hay bales or the zing “effects” that once moved me, and although it is great to see new faces, I am increasingly suspicious of the new kid on the block labels with implausibly perfect back stories. (I would really rather that the barrel selectors and new labels, in particular, were up-front about where they sourced their wines from.) I am also put off by the long lost botas of eye wateringly strong liquids that are frequently found and marketed. They can be remarkable wines, but at the moment the marketing seems more imaginative than transparent.

Rather, I am increasingly drawn to wines that express their time and place, whether that be vintage and terroir specific, or the really classic soleras, and rather than effects what I am looking for is the balance and the profile of the wines – more than anything the mark of a quality wine maker. At the very least I like to know what I am drinking and where it came from. And then I really do enjoy drinking it.

It is that time of year again. You are wondering what to get for that special sherry blogger in your life. Well worry no longer for I have the answers.

There is a school of thought that the old standards are the best, and there is no doubt you can’t go wrong with a bottle (or two) of La Panesa, Solear en rama, Maruja pasada, el Fossi or Tresillo. You certainly cannot go wrong with the white Sanlucar wines of Ube, the unique Encrucijado or the awesome Pandorga, and I must be doing something right if wines like this are such a regular part of my diet.

On the other hand and since it is Christmas you might be thinking bubbles. If so, just go with it. The palomino bubbles of Mr Angulo, the sherry dosed chardonnay or xarel-lo of Colet Navazos, or even just some Salon or Selosse from a decent year: there is room for all chez Sharquillo.

But if you are looking for something extra special, there are a few things I would relish in particular:

10.  First, I am curious to see what Peter Sisseck does with Fino Camborio. One of the big names of the “new Spain” has acquired one of the great old soleras – the last release of which was an absolute belter – and the combination is fascinating. Part of me hopes he doesn’t change anything (and it’s not exactly as if I need an excuse to get another bottle or two) but the possibilities are there.

9.  Las Viñas de Callejuela 2014 – to be honest I would settle for more of the 2015s (and I bet they will be better for a year in the bottle) and I look forward to the 2016s but from the little I have seen/sniffed/swallowed of the 2014s they are going to be absolute corkers. In fact as I write this I can imagine the Blanco brothers in red suits with big white beards – merry Christmas fellas!

8.  That brings me on to the new crop of Mayeteria Sanluqueña. There were some little gems this year and this is a project that if there is any justice is set to grow and grow.

7.  Beyond a picture on twitter I have absolutely no idea what they are doing but even so I am intrigued to the point of anxiety by the potential fruit of the fruit of the Leclapart Muchada union. (Sisseck, Leclapart – it looks like something really is changing down there.)

6.  I am almost ashamed to have to include Las Tres Miradas in this list. There is really no excuse for not having tried them yet. The guys at Alvear have kept me informed of the numerous tastings and there is no doubt in my mind of the potential either: the lads at Envinate know a few things about distinctive and approachable wines.

5.  Back onto more familiar terrain and I personally cannot wait for the Fino and Oloroso la Barajuela 2014 (and frankly anything from La Barajuela). I have been lucky enough to try the fino twice already and it was awesome but if Willy thinks it wasn’t ready for the bottle then who is going to argue with him? All I can say is when it is ready it looks like being a monster fino, and if that is the fino …

4.  And still I want more. Having been up and had a look at the vineyards nearly 18 months ago a chap is getting impatient with regard to Willy Perez’s wines from la Esperanza and El Caribe whatever they are. Come on Willy, get on with it!

3. And that Christmas carol line about King of Kings brings to mind Primitivo Collantes’ UVA Rey – wine of an unspecified nature from a vineyard of this regal old variety planted by the unsung hero of Chiclana. Once again all I know is that I saw a bottle on twitter alongside some of those cryptic descriptors that experts use, but knowing the man I reckon it is going to be tasty.

2. As I write this list I am getting more and more excited about the year ahead and one of the reasons is the relaunch of La Riva, one of the famous names absorbed by Domecq in the boom years and recently acquired by Ramiro Ibañez and Willy Perez. They have a white wine and a fino from the original vineyards and some little cellar dinosaurs in the pipeline and they will find me lying under the tap with my mouth open.

1. But what I am most looking forward to is Pitijopos Vol III, which this time around – possibly the last – is due to cover some of the legendary vineyards, and the old way South is watering at the very thought of it. But it almost doesn’t matter what the wines are like: if anyone ever does anything as important as the Pitijopos in Jerez again I will be very surprised, and there will probably never be another box of wines created with more genuine passion.

I appreciate it is a long list, but just think of my little eyes lighting up on Christmas morning …

Having spent my lunchtime perusing the shelves of a few local wine retailing establishments there is good and bad news. On the one hand, if the prices are anything to go by things are looking up for the wines of Jerez, Sanlucar, Montilla Moriles and elsewhere in Andalucia. On the other hand, I can probably no longer afford to blog as often as before. (I will let you decide which of the two is the good news.)

I am a big fan of en rama wines. I no longer have a category for them on the blog because almost all the wines I drink are en rama one way or the other, and I am not averse to filtered wines either, but on the whole if you offer me a filtered and an unfiltered wine I generally find the latter more interesting, more expressive and more likely to evolve in interesting ways.

I also like the fact that en rama wines have dates on them, even if only the date of the saca. It helps create a notion of scarcity, it gives wine writers a reason to try the wine again, and it also allows you to sell the wines as either very fresh (you see marketing along the lines of “straight from the barrel” and “raw”) or as very old (you see more and more “bottle aged” wines around). And most importantly, it gives you an excuse to announce the “launch” of the new saca, which has lead to people talking about a supposed “en rama season” in spring each year. It coincides with a couple of the bigger “launches” of en rama wines: the Tio Pepe en rama and the excellent Lustau “tres en rama”, and makes perfect commercial sense in terms of facilitating a big launch event/world tour and maximizing the impact generated.

Not all brands feel the same way. The longest running series of en rama bottlings is the Solear en rama by Barbadillo, which started a full 18 years ago, and one of the many things I admire about the series (in addition to the wine itself, which is cracking, and the labels, which are worth collecting in their own right) is that they produce a saca every season – spring, summer, autumn and winter. And they are not alone in releasing multiple sacas. Antonio Barbadillo’s excellent Sacristia AB releases two sacas of manzanilla a year, as do Tradición with their fino en rama. Maybe the most extreme case is Primitivo Collantes with his Arroyuelo en rama – the sacas are bottled to order – and the list could go on.

Of course, the season in which the saca takes place is of course highly relevant, and leads to very different wines. Generalizations are difficult but wines that are released in spring have been wintering under a vigorous veil of flor and tend to have a more marked biological influence, have a more incisive salinity and more green vegetation in aromas and flavours. It is easy to see why these are sold as “full of life”. Autumn sacas, by comparison, have been under a veil of flor that has groaned and sweated its way through the hot summer, the salinity is not quite as piercing and there is more oxidation of the wine, resulting in aromas and flavours that tend a little bit more to baked apples and roast nuts than fresh ones. (Probably the most complete account of the comparison is this one, from a vertical tasting of the Tradición finos, although I have also done a couple of side to sides with the Solear en rama here and elsewhere.)

But those very differences tell me that it makes no sense to focus on a single season for en rama wines. Looking back, two of my very favourite wines from the Solear series were the Dormouse and the Razorbill, from Autumn and Winter of 2015 (a very hot summer indeed), and it would be a great shame to have missed out on those or any of the autumn and winter sacas down the years. Indeed, the only saca of La Guita en rama so far was in October 2015 (and it is now drinking beautifully, by the way), and from memory I think I have only ever had winter sacas of the Fernando de Castilla en rama.

So whatever the marketing rationale, and despite the calls from some respected critics to do away with multiple releases per year in order to conform to the global standard of one vintage per vintage, I am not a believer in a single “en rama season”. Quite apart from anything else, winter is already depressing enough without depriving ourselves of these cracking wines.

 

 

I have a lot to write up, some of it even related to Jerez, but wanted to share some thoughts from tasting these five quite magnificent Chateau Neuf du Pape with David Martinez at el Mostrador de Vila Viniteca last night. 

They were all at the very top level, but for  me two stood out – the very first, Domaine de Marcoux Vielles Vignes 2009, which had a concentrated jammy fruit and liqueur that shouted out Chateauneuf; and the second, the amazing Chateau Rayas 2008, which had aromatics and a kind of ethereal strength that could only be, well, Chateau Rayas, which famously has cool terroir soil in a hot place. Talk about wines with personality. 

I am not saying that this level of expression is possible in Jerez, but surely we ought to be at least trying?