Different ocassions demands for different styles when it comes to Sherry. But, keep in mind that all Sherry’s are made from only three different kind of grapes, and these are Palomino, Moscatel and the one and only Pedro Ximinez.

The styles on the wines are: Manzanilla, Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso, Palo Cortado, Medium (sweetened Amontillado), Pale Cream (sweetened Oloroso), Pedro Ximinez  (natural sweetened) and the Moscatel (natural sweteened).

But the name Sherry, we’re does it come from, well the history tells us that it is from the English interpretation of the city of ”Jerez” de la Frontera which are one of the three cities in the Sherry region where you are allowed to grow the grapes and store the wine. The other two is Sanlucar de barrameida and El porto de Santa Maria.

But back to basics, what’s a Solera, well it’s a sort of a system to mature wines and blend wines at the same time. Well let me explain in a simple way. You put together a series of rows of casks of 500 litres on top of each other and on the highest level you put the youngest vintage and on the level below the next youngest and so on. That means that from the casks from the top there is a flow of younger vintages to the right hand cask on the ground level which are the oldest one, the Solera, which means that it is a blend from different vintages. In some way, some may say that’s cheating because you dont get the whole bottle you purchased with the vintage on the label, but this is a well known fact. The Solera system it self contributes in a major way to the creation and the diversity of the blends, and its also one of the reasons to keep the vintages for a longer time and there is no harm in that, is it? Today, they produce port in a similar way aswell as wine from Marsala and vinegar and the way of production was developed by the Spanish and the Portuguese. So now you know in a quit simple way how a Solera works. The chart below illustrates in a rather good way how the procedure works.

Tomorrow I will talk about ”flor” and Sanlucar de Barrameida and what’s so special about that.

Cheers all of you #sherrylovers