Sherry Boots
I don't like easy things. I don't like movies whose ending I already guess in the trailer or stories with -only- beginning, middle and end. I also don't like summer songs or Lost or television series that leave honey on my lips at the end of each episode. "To be continue". That I'm not stupid. Obviously, I don't like easy women, I mean those whose life you already know -her whole life, I add- a couple of hours after meeting her in that bar in Malasaña. I don't like silicone, or that “look at me everyone” attitude, or that the whole room knows you're here when you walk in the door. I like that they know when you leave.
I hate always knowing what's wrong with you and what your cards are because then there's no game, and I have come here to play . So, why should it be any different with wines?
Every wine lover is at first a teenager in search of sensations . Looking for each new wine to make him fall in love, impact him and make him feel things, that is why it is logical -and even necessary- that in those years of birth and submission to Bacchus one looks for “easy” wines Pairing: resounding wines, intense aromas and silicone, lots of silicone. More concentrated wines with more structure, with overripe fruit, casseroled wood and other fireworks that Robert Parker and (his millions of) acolytes fall in love with so much.
But one matures. And where before he looked for yellow tiles, light signals and trumpets, now he looks for subtlety, poetry and whispers. That's why the journey always starts in Bordeaux -Ava Gardner- and ends in Burgundy -Grace Kelly- and that's why all wine lovers (and when I say everyone, I mean everyone) ends up, sooner or later, surrendering completely to Jerez , to the wines of Jerez, to the magic of Jerez. From Pitu Roca to Gerry Dawes, Luis Gutiérrez or Jancis Robinson.
Pedro Domecq's winery
The world of Jerez is difficult, very difficult at the beginning . That is why Mantel & Cuchillo has traveled to Cádiz to clarify (with an amontillado in hand) and with the help of maestro Fernando Angulo the mystery that surrounds the Jerez setting. Teacher, friend, founder of the Famiglia and owner of that wine shop that is not a shop, it is a paradise (don't miss the selection of sherries). This is the result of a conversation with a single question: "Why do you love Jerez?"
- On the albariza floor , possibly the most complex and simple at the same time, roots that penetrate and climb into the subsoil in search of nutrients, salt and sea. A high limestone soil with a high calcareous content (similar to that found in the Côte de Blancs de Champagne) that comes from the sea that occupied the vineyards millions of years ago. the albariza has the virtue of retaining water for a long time and therefore can self-regulate its contribution to the plant in periods of drought.
- Because it reaches your soul and traps you forever, for their truth and for how they transmit the feeling and character of their inhabitants . In Sanlúcar de Barrameda the streets smell of Manzanillas and the Manzanillas smell of the sea. And at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. It is something magical that is born from its people and it seems that nobody wants or seeks an explanation of its cause.
- For his life, few wines in the world are so long-lived like those of Marco Jerez. Amontillados, Oloroso, Palo Cortados and Finos that seem eternal. Because they are natural wines that do not need the addition of sulfur to be protected and maintained, their "coat" is natural.
- Because they convey joy and their conjunction with flamenco is visceral and essential . Because they are cultural, literary and poetic wines, because they have inspired great writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Lord Byron or Benito Pérez Galdós...
- By Eduardo Ojeda and Jesús Barquín, creators of that madness ahead of our time called Team Navazos. By Álvaro Girón, the Manzanillas doctor, the spiritual support of the Team. Because they will show the path that Jerez has to follow.
Fancy a drink, right?
* An essential reading for beginners is 'The Great Book of Sherry Wines'.
Vineyards around Jerez