Wine producers in the region of Jerez in Spain say their total amount of vineyards decreased nearly 70 percent in the last three decades from about 24,000 hectares of vines to slightly less than 7,500. It was certainly noticeable to me when my editors and I drove from Jerez Airport toward the city of Sanlucar de Barrameda last week.
I kept asking myself in the car as we continued down the highway, “Where are all the vineyards I remember from the early 1990s while working on a story about the region as a senior editor with The Wine Spectator?” What were once rolling hills of green vines planted in dusty, calcium-rich white soils were now barren farmland with giant windmills slowly spinning to produce electricity.
I noted in that story that trouble was brewing in the region, with a decline in sales around the world hurting the local economy, but I never thought the conditions would deteriorate to the current state of decay. The towns and agricultural land in the region are now scattered with derelict buildings that once made and stored sherry, and many of the great names and families of the region are long gone.
Until recently, the only increase in business in Jerez has been Scotch whisky producers buying used or “seasoned” sherry barrels to age their precious spirits in because the growing global demand for their bottles continues to reach seemingly unstoppable levels. Regardless, the feeling of wealth is long gone, replaced by the slow and everyday vibe of a historical agricultural center in Spain.
The big names, such as Gonzalez Byass and Valdespino, are still making millions of good to outstanding bottles of the fortified wines that made sherry famous centuries ago, and there seems to be a revival underway in Spain for the fresher and fruitier types of sherry like fino and Manzanilla, with 50 percent of the production of the latter being consumed around the country, particularly from ice cold bottles during the summer on the coast.
In addition, some young winemakers from Jerez as well as other parts of Spain have bought old vineyards and established new wineries to try to re–create some of the magic of the golden age of sherry as well as generate new ideas and revive old ones, whether making a single–vineyard, low–alcohol table wine from the old–vine workhouse grape of palomino or crafting a precise and fresh vintage Manzanilla.
PALOMINO FERMENTING IN OLD BOTAS AT BODEGAS VALDESPINO IN JEREZ
FLOR IN A FINO GLASS AT GONZALEZ BYASS
“Our generation has gone back to the vineyard,” said Guillermo “Willy” Perez, the co-owner of M. Ant. De la Riva, a new table wine and sherry producer with about two dozen vineyards. “This is our future.”
Perez’s father worked for the Domecq family as one of the top wine production experts during the later part of the 20th century, and he remembers playing in the bodegas and vineyards of the clan’s massive holdings. “It’s hard to believe they are not here,” he said while we visited vineyards around the Macharnudo area that were once owned by the Domecq family but are now owned by a number of others with different parcels, including Perez. “We are here because of the Domecq and Gonzalez Byass families and we need to show respect to them and the region.”
The homage to these names, Perez believes, comes through in the high quality of many of his wines, which are not only precisely made fortified sherries, both biologically aged and oxidized, but also table wines and flor–aged nonfortified wines. He hopes that these nonfortified wines will soon be able to carry the Jerez D.O. appellation on their labels instead of simply being called Spanish table wines.
TESTING THE BORDEAUX MARKET
Perez is now even selling a table wine via La Place de Bordeaux, the famous international wine market, as a nod to his quality and innovation, and it is available in key wine markets around the world. The wine, the M. Anto De la Riva Jerez Macharnudo San Cayetano Vino de Pasto 2022, is partially produced by drying palomino grapes on straw mats before fermentation to increase their sugar content and produce a wine higher in alcohol. Palomino normally doesn’t ripen much past 10 or 11 percent alcohol.
Selling through the Bordeaux market “has helped us develop our white wine revolution,” Perez said. “It can be cooler and easier to make and sell wines outside of the denomination of origin and we need to fight for the appellation. It belongs to us.”
Alejandro Muchada is also a local and young vine grower who believes in the appellation but is focused on low-alcohol wines from certified biodynamically grown vineyards. He says he is the only Demeter-certified vine grower in the region. Muchada makes the wine with his partner from Champagne, David Leclapart.
“White wine is opening everything for us,” Muchada said, pointing out that making a fino or Manzanilla would take at least five years of stock to sell wine. “Now you have many people making table wines and it’s really wonderful.”
The small current renaissance in winemaking in Jerez has also attracted some big–name winemakers from outside the region, particularly Peter Sisseck, who is the owner of one of the great names of Spain, Dominio de Pingus in Ribera del Duero, as well as Portugal’s wine guru, Dirk van der Niepoort, who arguably makes the best table wines in that country.
Sisseck has taken a more traditional route producing fino from two top vineyards in Viña Balbaina and Viña Macharnudo. He acquired a sherry solera from a local family about seven years ago and already has released some bottlings under the name Bodega San Francisco Javier.
“People who said that I make the best red wine in Spain asked me many times to make a great white,” he said while tasting a range of different finos in his bodega in Jerez. “I finally realized that the greatest place to make a great white in Spain is here in Jerez.” Check out ratings for his wines below.
He called the biological development of flor in Manzanilla and in other types of sherry a “miracle in a way,” adding that “it is a gift from Spain to the world.”
Van der Niepoort is equally amazed by the vineyards and vines of Jerez, and he deeply appreciates the various wine projects in the region that he has with Bodegas Barbadillo, a historical name in Jerez for sherry. His first bottling is a selection of Manzanilla, but he currently has table wines from single vineyards of the palomino grape aging in sherry barrels.
“I first came here to make wine in 2008, but it was hard to convince people to make lighter Manzanillas with specific vineyards and old vines that show terroir,” van der Niepoort said while tasting in the old cellars of Barbadillo. “But now that has changed.”
He is hoping that the small wine revolution in Jerez could follow the success of wine production in Portugal’s Douro Valley, where sales of Port were in decline in the 1990s until the successful development of fine wines improved the fortunes of the industry there. Today, some Douro table wines, particularly his, are considered to be some of the best in the world.
“It could make a huge difference,” he said. “The new wines are more expensive, and this could help stop the destruction of vineyards in Jerez and it can attract more people to the real thing, which is sherry. It won’t take anything away.”
Some of the top–quality, new–generation wines rated below illustrate his point. And it has inspired me and my team of tasters in Spain to return to Jerez soon and visit and taste more.
– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman, with Senior Editors Jacobo Andrade and Zekun Shuai.
Note: You can sort the wines below by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.
