EDITORIAL

Any person of my age from Jerez will agree with me if I tell him or her that our childhood had a common smell: When he or she were walking around the streets of Jerez town center suddenly a strong  wine smell appeared and without being aware that smell took part of our memories forever. Nowadays children rarely have this feeling. This lack of wine smell is because there are very few wineries in the city: some of them moved to the outskirts of Jerez and most of them have disappeared. The reason is that sales began to decline at the end of the 20th century as Sherry fell out of fashion among consumers-especially in some of the emerging markets of the USA, Japan, Australia, …

 To sum up, we can say that wine sherry has a process of aging that hasn’t changed along the last fifty years but the number of wineries has decreased. In many cases modern technologies can help but not in this aging.

 Regarding to visitors sherry wine is historically visited by English, German and Spanish people and lately by Japanese and new rich countries.

By Mª Carmen Algaba, 5ºB



Winery “Bodegas Tradición”

When we hear the name of the city “Jerez” it brings to mind wine, flamenco, horses and motorcycle.

The wine industry is the most important economic sector in Jerez and export Jerez-Xérez-Sherry all over the world. 

In the XV and XVI century, Jerez wine developed into a rich source for the region and the king protected the wine and exported it to England, France and the Netherlands. All the ships which travelled to America reserved the third part of their loading for the wine.

From 1682 on, the English businessmen settled up in Jerez and founded wineries like: Garvey, Duff-Gordon, Wisdom & Warter, Osborne. After them, Spaniards repatriated to Spain after the independence of the colonies (González, Marqués de Misa), and French people like Domecq and Lacave, invested money in the wineries, too.

The wineries, which receive every year a lot of English and German tourist visitors are mainly Bodegas Williams & Humbert, Bodegas Sandeman and Bodegas González Byass (Tio Pepe). More and more French and Italian tourists are coming to Andalusia and visit the wineries too.

But we have a few different types of wineries in Jerez, unknown for most of the tourists but well-known for the wine experts. One of this winery is “Bodegas Tradición”. The main purpose of this winery is to be a craft industry. In this winery the wine will be elaborated in a traditional way.

The winery was established in the XIX century. The constructions have small windows, thickness walls, a sandy and stony ground, high roofs and little light.  It is a small winery and the only one which exclusively takes up and manufactures the most mature wines, recognized by the “Consejo regulador”. All the wines are classified as V.O.S. – Very Old Sherry with more than 20 years ageing – or V.O.R.S. – Very Old Rare Sherry with more than 30 years ageing. The production of this wine is very limited, never more than 15.000 bottles yearly. So the manufacture is 100% handmade.

By Maria José Campos, 5ºA