Discover the misconceptions about types of sherries and sherry wine production
There are many myths within the sherry wine world, even among sherry wine people surrounded by bodegas. If you are interested in learning about the misconceptions around sherry wine keep reading.
In this blog I will talk about the top 8 myths around the world of sherry. Some of the misconceptions about sherry making and some are about types of sherries.
Moreover, I must admit that some of these controversies I learnt quite recently by talking to the professor Dr. Victor Manuel Palacios Macias and with the archeo-gastronomer Manuel León.
This blog might be a little bit controversial as there are many misconceptions even among sherry experts. Therefore, I am also going to explain my sources for this blog. I have written it in collaboration with the professor Dr. Victor Manuel Palacios Macias, who focuses on food technology around agrifood and winemaking. He has also worked with archeo-gastronomers to recover garum sauce, Roman wine and more. I have also written it in collaboration with the archeo-gastronomer Manuel Leon from the business Arqueogastronomía for his input. Additionally part of the information was taken from the incredible document, “Las añadas en el marco de jerez primera parte”, published by Luis Pérez Vega and Ramiro Ibáñez Espinar in 2016.
Other myths are more commonly known. You can get the information from a sherry book or by doing a sherry bodega tour.
Sherry wine is a 3000 year old wine
For this I will start with the history of sherry. This point is very controversial and it is better if we break down the history of wine in the region.
-Sherry in Phoenicians and Roman times
The DO says that the palomino grape was brought by the Phoenicians, however there is nothing published or enough evidence to be certain. It is true that Strabo, in his work Geography, Book III, states that the Phoenicians are the ones who brought the different varieties of vines from the eastern Mediterranean, alluding to the extensive viticulture that was practiced in the area. However, at no time does he mention the Palomino grape or any other variety. Therefore, Strabo does not document that the palomino was brought by the Phoenicians, nor is there any scientific data to support it.
As the writer Columella wrote, the Roman wine from Cadiz, Caretanus wine, was exported to the Roman empire. It was not an incredible wine but it was a known wine in the Empire. So Romans showed us how to make wine. However, that is table wine and not fortified sherry wine. Although in Roman times there are documented techniques to increase the alcohol content in wines, documented by the Archeogastronomy team, and which are collected in the proceedings of the Congress ex Dolia Hispania (Tarragona, 2022), they do not destil the alcohol. Thus, I would still not say that Sherry started in the Roman period either.
-Sherry in Moorish times
However, when we think about sherry we have to think about a fortified wine. This was thanks to the Moors who brought distilled alcohol which later, around 15th-16th century, was added to the wine to increase longevity.
The term sherry comes from the Moorish name of Jerez de la Frontera, Sherish. The name changed to Jerez in Spanish over time. For the shippers buying sherry and selling it in the own countries, Sherish changed to sherry which was easier to say than jerez around the 16th century. Therefore the name changed naturally from Sherish to Sherry.
So how old is sherry wine? Do you start counting from when the region started making any wine? Fortified sherry wine has little to do with Roman wine from the area, of which you can find a scientific reconstruction made by “Arqueogastronomia”. In my opinion, sherry began with fortification which is one of the major characteristics of sherry.
Origin of the most common grape for sherry, Palomino, was brought by the Phoenicians
This point is very controversial. The DO says that the palomino grape was brought by the Phoenicians, however there is nothing published or enough evidence to be certain.
Evidence saying that Phoenicians brought the Palomino grape
It is true that Strabo, in his work Geography, Book III, states that the Phoenicians are the ones who brought the different varieties of vines from the eastern Mediterranean, alluding to the extensive viticulture that was practiced in the area. Strabo was born at the end of the first century BC. At no time does he mention the Palomino grape or any other variety. He only makes this brief observation, assuming that these varieties are brought by the Phoenicians, dating back the presence of the domesticated vine to the 9th-8th century. This ignores the Punic-Carthaginian presence and influence, which I understand to be important, since the chronology of Doña Blanca’s winepress is between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC. Therefore, Strabo does not document that the palomino grape itself was brought by the Phoenicians, nor is there any scientific data to support it.
As usual there is not enough money to research and there is a lot of soil to be studied from the Phoenician ruins of Doñablanca that could tell us a little bit more about this. Could palomino have been a variety found in the Iberian peninsula as well or was it brought much earlier by settlers?
Use of Palomino in Sherry in modern history
Until October of 2022 it was the only grape allowed to be used for dry sherries. However, until the 20th century you could use any grape. Nowadays the new regulations tells you that you can use any endemic grape from Cadiz.
For a while the compulsory use of palomino displaced many native grapes from Cadiz and made them endangered. Grapes like Vijiriega, Uva rey, Mantúa, Perruno, etc were not used. The majority of money was coming from the production of sherry and not other wines so not many people were planting them.
Sherry was always a blending wine
If we consider that sherry starts when we started fortifying then we have to understand that at the beginning it was typically a single vintage oloroso sherry wine. So it was not a blending wine made with criaderas and soleras until much later.
-Sherry during medieval times
In the 15th-16th centuries sherry was well known in the world. Many European shippers came to Cadiz to sell sherry in their own countries or regions. A few centuries later these people created many of the known bodegas like González Byass, Williams & Humbert, Hidalgo la Gitana, Domecq, and more. In fact, these shippers created the sweet sherry varieties as sweet wines had high demand for European consumers. Sherry originally was dry.
They believe that the original sherry was an oloroso. It was easy to make as you don’t have to worry about temperature, light or humidity. You make base wine, add alcohol over 18% alcohol (originally much higher) and let it oxidize.
The oak used at the beginning were most commonly chestnut and local oak barrels, as well as sometimes American oak. It could be that one of the first wines ever to arrive to North America would have been sherry and the fortified wines of Huelva. They may have also been the first ones to use American oak in history.
-Sherry wine from the 19th century to current times
All the way until the end of the 19th century sherry was commonly vintage “añada”. The system of criaderas and soleras started when they had a big demand that they had to produce large quantities every year, even if one year had a poor harvest. Another reason was to save space in the bodegas where they started stacking the barrels on top of each other.
The barrels used at this time until currently is American oak.
In 1933 the DO jerez-xéres-sherry was added into the first Spanish wine law. This sherry regulation was largely unchanged until October 2022, when a lot has changed. You can read more about the changes here, although I touch on the main changes below.
Sherry is a sweet fortified wine
This is a very typical misconception. There are 10 types of Sherries and not all of them are sweet. There are 5 that are sweet. In fact one type, Pedro Ximenez, is one of the sweetest wines in the world together with Rutherglen Muscat from Australia. An aged PX can reach 400-500gr of residual sugar per litre.
However, as you can read in the previous section, you can see that historically sherry was actually dry. The sweet varieties were all created around the 15th-16th centuries to cover the demand for sweet wines in European countries. In fact, they think that the first real sherry wine was an oloroso which is the easiest to produce.
In fact, the biological aged sherries are among the driest wines in the world. A manzanilla and a fino can have less then 1gr of residual sugar per litre. To help you understand, this is the amount of sugar in a brut nature champagne.
The layer of yeast (Velo de flor) appeared with fino and manzanilla sherry
The layer of yeast has been in most recent years used in different types of wines to add more complexity and body to the wines, not only Sherry. However, it is true that it was only used for making biological aged sherries for over a century.
The use of the layer of yeast to age the wine in the region of Cadiz goes way back though. Several Roman writers, like Columella, talked about the layer of yeast and shows that it was used in different parts of the Iberian Peninsula. It is currently being researched and the paper is about to be publiched. Once it is published I will post it here.
If you are in doubt you can contact Manuel León whose business in partnership with the University of Cadiz have focused research in this. In fact, they have recreated a Roman white following the information from the books of Columella. They have a couple of wines, but the lixivo wine is aged under the “nata”(flor) and aged in dolium (baked clay container).
Palo cortado sherry was a mistake
The origin of palo cortado was around the beginning of criaderas and soleras system at the end of the 19th century (read section above). Some believe that palo cortado was a mistake, a fino gone wrong because the layer of yeast disappears without knowing why. It could have very little biological ageing or none at all.
However, research has shown it was not a mistake. This wine used the best soil, Albariza, and using the first press of grapes. According to “Las añadas en el marco de jerez primera parte”, published by Luis Pérez Vega and Ramiro Ibáñez Espinar in 2016, they used to sun dry the grapes for a maximum of two days and collect the last harvests to have a little bit more alcohol, which made it more difficult for the layer of yeast to survive for long. It could also be produced with other late harvested grape varieties, not only with Palomino. This is going to blow your minds but this publication has been doing a lot of research into old documents and trusted by the professor Victor Manuel Palacios from the University of Cadiz.
The palo cortados were the most important wines of Jerez, within the group of fine and elegant wines, where “palmas” and “palmas cortadas” were still a minority.
Sherry is aged in the sherry triangle
From October 2022 many of the regulations changed like the disappearance of the sherry triangle. There are many other changes like ways to transport sherry, some types of sherry names and labelling of sherries. However, I am going to focus on the two main changes. If you want to read more about the changes please click here.
-Sherry wine legal production area
In the previous D.O. Jerez-Sherry-Xeres regulations, sherry could only be aged in the sherry triangle, although the grapes could come from the “Marco de Jerez” which includes Rota, Chipiona, Trebujena, Lebrija and Chiclana de la Frontera. Now the new changes allow the “Marco de Jerez” to also age sherry (as well as the sherry triangle of course). The new DO regulations also allow unfortified wine from Montilla Moriles made with Pedro Ximenez to produce Sherry. 
Dry sherries can only be made with palomino grape
From the beginning of the 1900s until October 2022 Palomino was the only grape allowed to make dry Sherry wine. With the new rules many of the native endangered grapes from Cadiz can produce sherry wine. Some of these new grapes are Mantúo Castellano, Mantúo de Pilas, Vejeriego, Perruno, Cañocazo and Beba.
Sherry wine experiences
If you are looking for Sherry wine experiences from Seville or Cadiz, contact us. We do cultural and culinary experiences throughout Cadiz province.
Sherry wine tours
If you have your own transport we can accompany you while learning about Jerez-Sherry-Xeres D.O. and Manzanilla, from the vineyard to your glass. Enjoy the best Sherry bodega tours, local culture and traditions, and the local gastronomy. I can help arranging part of your trip on our Ultimate Sherry wine Tasting tour. We can also design a private tour just for you and your family.
Please watch the next video to see what do we do in the sherry winery tour:
If you are staying in Vejer de la Frontera or within Cadiz province we can organize a private Sherry wine tasting with local gourmet tapas for your group. We will go to your place and do a Sherry wine or Andalusian wine tasting for you privately. Each sherry wine will pair with a local food tapa. We can focus on premium Sherries; VORS and premium Sherries; or Andalusian wines.
If you want to learn more about Jerez de la Frontera while tasting 5 different sherries with 5 local tapas in traditional tabancos bars and enjoying a little bit of flamenco join our tabancos tour in Jerez. Or try our sherry wine & tapas tour in Cadiz or Vejer de la Frontera! Learn about 5 different sherry wines (from dry to sweet), wine tastings, and how to pair it with gourmet traditional food from the area. The tour includes 5 tapas and 5 wines/Sherries.
Sherry wine love is very contagious, surely you will also become a sherry lover!
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