Jerez - Our first ever wine tasting experience

After the hecticness of Sevilla, Jerez was a lovely place to escape the crowds and noise. Located about 90km south of Sevilla, Jerez is known worldwide for its production of Sherry, flamenco shows and world class horsemanship schools. Having had a taste of flamenco already in Granada and Sevilla, we decided to instead focus on the Sherry!

The best way to find out and experience this was to go on a wine tasting tour of one of the many bodegas within Jerez. We looked through several and carefully chose one; Bodega Fundador Pedro Domecq. The reason we chose this one is that it offered the best value for money, being a longer tour than 90% of the others and allowed you to try a wider selection of drinks as well, also offering the opportunity of not only tasting Sherry wine but also brandy.

The nice grounds of Pedro Domecq Bodega

The tour lasted about 90 minutes, and we were joined by two other people; a father and son from Exeter in England! The good thing about having a small group was that it allowed us to ask more questions and take more pictures.

To start the tour we watched a 15 minute video about the history of the bodegas and about the region of Jerez in general, learning some very interesting facts. This bodega specialised in Fundador Brandy, Harvey's Bristol Cream and Terry Sherry wine, which comes in different types. The most famous ones are: Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso and Pedro Ximnez. The type of grapes used to produce these Sherry wines are the Palomino grape and the Pedro Ximnez grape in different concentrations.

The four most famous types of Sherry in Jerez

All the grapes used for these Sherry's are grown within the triangular area of the province of Cadiz between Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and Puerto de Santa María. Once they are picked and pressed the juices (must) are allowed to ferment for a few months. After those few months the wine is tasted and then depending on how it tastes determines how they will fortify it to make the different types of sherry wine.

This is where the tour guide took over. She first of all took us on a little tour of the facilities before then moving on to show us into a huge room full of casks of Sherry wine. She explained how after they have been fortified they are put into 500 litre casks made of North American Oak, some of the casks are over a hundred years old.

This cask was over a hundred years old

The sherry is then left to age for a minimum of 3 years using the solera system. This is where there is a stack of 3 rows of casks on top of each other and as the wine ages a third of the wine from the top cask is removed and put in the cask below it and left for another year to age, and so on till the bottom cask where a third of the wine is taken out, (which would be after 3 years) it is then put into bottles and is ready to drink!

The solera system with the oldest wine at the bottom and the newest at the top

We were then taken around some casks that were signed by famous people that had visited the bodega in the past, there were some very well known names like Charlton Heston, Bo Derek, a past King of Italy and Pablo Picasso's daughter.

Barrels signed by famous people, you can see Picasso's daughter and Charlton Heston here.

The last part of the tour was what most people would consider the highlight; the tasting. For us this was an experience in itself as neither of us had had sherry wine or brandy before. We were given two of each types of drink to sample. First of all were the Sherry's, the first sherry neither of us were particularly keen on, but we both quite liked Harvey's Bristol cream, which was a blend of sherry and brandy. We then tasted the brandy's, (the highlight for our tour companions) the first one was a normal brandy, which again neither of us was very keen on, but the second, the Fundador brandy that our tour companions had raved about so much was really smooth and was surprisingly good for a brandy!

To finish off we were shown to the Bodega's shop where our tour companions from Exeter were kind enough to buy us a magnet as a souvenir.

The magnet we were given as a souvenir

So if you are in Jerez in the future and are thinking about having a tour of a bodega, we would highly recommend it.