WELCOME TO THE BLOG OF 5TH YEAR STUDENTS FROM JEREZ!!!

Here you can see some photos of the visit to the winery. Then you have all the articles written in our special edition of our newspaper!!!!

                              ECONOMY

PROMOTING JEREZ WINERIES

In the 1960's the sherry firms of the Jerez Region were pioneers promoting wine tourism. Nowadays the wineries of Jerez are the most visited in all Europe, attracting over half a million visitors each year. Wineries are visited by people from different nationalities, being English, American, German, Australian and Chinese people the main visitors.

Research has been conducted on what motivates people to visit wineries, and the results show that it is based on age, interest and even nationality.

The most important reasons why foreign people are interested in visiting a winery are to taste wine, to learn first hand about the characteristic sherry production process, tour cellars and vineyards and to visit the famous cathedral-like structures of the bodegas. Finally, there are those who cite the healthful aspect of wine as a rationale to expand their visits to wine regions.

By Laura Gálvez Segura 5ºB

INCREASE OF FOREIGN VISITORS

Over the past few years, there has been a steady increase in the amount of foreign visitors to our wineries.

Statistics from the tourist office show that UK tourists are second only to the Germans as foreign visitors to the town and wineries. Having interviewed a group of English visitors, they said “ Sherry is now very popular with younger people, whereas in the past it was always seen as an older people’s drink ”.

The most popular reason for visiting Jerez is not the sunshine, but Sherry as a symbol of the area, a symbol of culture and tradition.

With so many different varieties of Sherries to suit everybody’s taste, the popularity of Sherry is definitely increasing.


By Luisa Martínez, 5º B

STATISTICS ABOUT FOREIGN VISITORS IN GENERAL

Tourism is one of the most important financial activities in Jerez de la Frontera. Specially, we can emphasize the importance of the wineries in the touristic area. A proof of this is that over 30,000 visits are estimated per year in Jerez.

Wineries offer visitors a huge variety of things that they can enjoy. For example, most of the wineries have guided routes where people can learn more about the process to elaborate a good wine. In addition, some of them organize equestrian shows and even we can find art collections. These are the reasons why people choose wineries like an important and an interesting place to visit.

Most of foreign visitors are from Great Britain and Germany. But also, wineries receive the visits of people from France, the Netherlands and Belgium. Among Spanish visitors we can find people from Andalucía, Madrid, Cataluña, Valencia and País Vasco.

HOW HAS THE ELABORATION OF SHERRY WINE CHANGED?

In the late eighteenth century the Sherry wine was not made as it is known now. The Sherry wine which was exported was a wine of the year, fortified to preserve it in a good condition during the journeys.

This changed in the early nineteenth century to the system that is still being used. This system enabled the mixing of different harvests that led to a new way of aging known as soleras and criaderas.

Sherry is aged in the solera system where new wine is put into wine barrels at the beginning of a series of three, empty at the top to allow yeasts to develop on top of the wine, to nine barrels. Periodically, a portion of the wine in a barrel is moved into the next barrel down, using tools called the canoa (canoe) and rociador (sprinkler) to move the wine gently and avoid damaging the layer of the yeast in each barrel. At the end of the series only a portion of the final barrel is bottled and sold.

The way of producing Sherry wine has not changed in one century but there is something that changed in 1977 a new Regulation of Designation of Origin Jerez-Xérès-Sherry y Manzanilla-Sanlúcar de Barrameda and its Regulatory Board was published. This is a name or sign used on certain products which corresponds to a specific geographical location or origin and assures quality to the product.

Beatriz Montaner Panach

RECENT CHANGES

Since the 1980s, the traditional Spanish winegrowing regions have been carrying out deep changes in response to increasing international competition.

        There are significant improvements in winemaking technology over the last fifty years, such as: access to better grape varieties and systematic research into viticulture. Other recent practises include spraying water on vines to protect them from sub-zero temperatures (aspersion), new grafting techniques, and mechanical harvesting. The use of drip irrigation in recent years has expanded vineyards into areas which were previously implantable.

        After a strong process of modernization winemaking experienced in the vineyards and Spanish wines for the past 50 years, the sector faces the most promising complex and numerous challenges.

        The professionalization of the sector goes through improvement of quality of supply combining tradition and innovation in a highly competitive context.

                                                                                         By Loli Martín  

SOLERA SYSTEM

Sherry wine is well-known around the world for many different reasons. Its characteristic ageing system is one of the most important of them.

In the last 50 years, ageing in wineries have not changed so far. The traditional, genuine system used for ageing sherry wines is known as the Criaderas and Solera System. This is a dynamic system by which wines from different stages of the ageing process are blended together in order to perpetuate specific characteristics in the wine. Periodically, a specific proportion of the wine in each of the butts (botas) making up the solera system is extracted, leaving them partially empty. The space thus created in the solera (floor-level) casks is topped up with wine taken from the next oldest scale, 1^st criadera. The space thus created in the 1st criadera is then in turn topped up with wine similarly removed from the 2nd criadera, and so on up to the youngest scale. This is a result of combining all the different vintages.

Traditionally, “trasegadores” execute this process manually, with two different tools: a canoe and a “rociador”. They are used to pour the wine slowly and carefully inside the bodega butt without disturbing the film of “flor” covering the surface of the biologically ageing wine.

As a result, a wide range of different wines are obtained to enjoy an enjoyable moment.

By Esperanza del Rocío Moreno Racero      5º B

WINES, BRANDIES AND … PAINTINGS!

JEREZ, 11^TH OF FEBRUARY, 2011. One thing that nobody expects to find is an art gallery at a winery. Apart from producing the oldest noble and, of course, expensive wines and brandies from Jerez, the Bodega Tradición has one of the most important private painting exhibitions in Andalusia.

ABOVE: Carlos IV by Goya, belonging to the Joaquin Rivero´s collection

This is only an example that shows how wine cellars have changed in Jerez. Lots of them have become pubs, function suites to celebrate wedding and parties, garages and, in the worst cases, they have been demolished, leaving a place to build a block of flats. As a result, after having nearly 3oo wineries in this city, now there are only 65.

Changes in drinking consumption and demand, as well as an unfair competition with British “Sherry” (as wines from Jerez are known) have led to this situation.

However, cases such as this allow us to believe that this traditional industry that is part of our heritage, will never disappear.

BY DAMIÁN ARMARIO SAMPALO

FIFTH YEAR OF ENGLISH

REAL ORIGINS?

The wineries world is very traditional. When Alfonso X the Wise’s troops arrived to Jerez in 1264 there were already twenty one cellars in the city. In spite of being more than eight centuries of history, the making process have experimented very few changes, generally speaking.

In the last fifty years the process is more or less the same, but there are some changes in the tools to take out the wine of the barrels. This process is designated “la saca” and the tool is called canoe, which is used to take out little by little the wine and mix it with the other barrels.

Tradición Cellar, which we visited, is a young winery, of about thirteen years, but we were able to see that the ripening process is practically the same.

By Jose Maria Guillen. 5º B.