NOVEL PROCESS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 11, 14 January 1933, Page 13

NOVEL PROCESS

BREEDING A SHERRY

BASIS FOR FUTURE WINES

THE WORK OF SPAIN

Now is one of the most anxious times of the year for the sherry-makers of Jerez de la Frontera, because it is now they are beginning to taste the season's wines and find out what lufek they are to have in the quality of the various vats. It actually is a matter of luck, because it is one of many peculiarities of sherry that neither the known factors of soil in a vineyard, nor the quality of the grapes, nor skill in the making controls the quality or type'tkat will result. And, of course, a consistent high quality in all these respects is maintained at Jerez as another firstrate wine centres (writes Boyd Cable in the "Manchester Guardian"). Nothing has been altered in the method of making sherry, which has continued from the most remote and unrecorded times; and tho methods are entirely different from those followed in the making of any other kind of wine. Jerez is a comparatively small area of vineyards round the town of that name in the southern part of Spain, so that most of the grapes are ready for picking about the same time, and the picking weeks bring a hustle and bustle which might astonish those who regard the Spaniards as incapable of sustained and intense activity. The vintage is in_ August-September, and the grape juice or "must" is left to itself to ferment until November.

GREAT DIFFERENCE,

In this process is another differenco from that of any other wine. The loss in the volume of "must" is not made up as it is in other wines, and a scum forms of minute fungi called the "flower." Nothing can de done to affect the quantity, quality, or character of this "flower" in the different casks or vats, and it is on it alone that the resulting typo and quality of the sherry will depend. . ■ Here comes ono of tlic other peculiarities of sherry—that out of half a dozen casks of juico pressed from the same class "of grape grown on the same patch of ground, pressed on the same day, and treated throughout exactly alike, you may get half a dozen entirely different types of wine. One cask may turn out a pale, dry fine sherry and the next one to it a full deep golden fruity type. A vineyard giving grapes that are expected to turn into a pale Amontillado will often not yield one cask in a dozen of that type. In November the first tasting is made and it is possible to classif. the wines and estimate their future standard or value, which will vary as much as do the types developed. Later tests will usually confirm tho first rough classification and allow the. very finest of tho new wines to be set aside and used for the "solera" and the future "breeding." .

THE "SOLERA."

Here is the last and most amazing of the queer facts of sherry-making—the "solera," or breeding from an original foundation of a type, quality, and flavour of wine that can. continue almost indefinitely. When any one vatting is.selected as a specially good ono and worthy of perpetuation, it is made a solera, or basia for . future "breeding." When, the original solera is considered sufficiently developed for use, a quantity of the wine is drawn off for bottling, and tho quantity drawn is replaced by the, wine of a later year. In some cases two or three soleras are used for a certain type of sherry, and the,quantity.drawn from the oldest is madeup from the next oldest, and the second oldest from tho third. As a matter of principle,, tho finest of the younger wines in. the bodega is reserved for the replenishment of the- older soleras. . I wonder'; how many regular lovers and buyers of a certain known "brand" of sherry which they have drunk year after year and found of the accustomed and consistent quality, body, and taste, know that the first solera of it may have been from grapes grown a hundred years ago, that, ever since, tho original wine has been diminished and. replaced by wines of the later years, and that it is only because the greater-greatest grandfather could continue to impress his breed on the newer generations that the "same" sherry could be drunk year after year, generation after generation. UNCHANGED. So fixM and definite is this impress of breed that I have seen in some of the leading bodegas of Jerez enormous "casks" or vats ■ which have scribbled on them in chalk the names of Wellington and Buskin (now carefully preserved under glass), and I have been assured •that each year so much of the wine is drawn off and replaced, but has never been found to vary in quality and taste from the year the solera was first named after (and in si-me cases by) the hero or famous figure of the: day. : : Tho last season. I was in Jerez and looked over some of the most famous of the bodegas—a bodega in, Spain being the place where the wine is made, stored, and "bred"—l was shown the latest of the casks containing a new solera destined to carry on the breed through the coming years. The head of ono cask bore the glass-covered signature of Alfonso XIII and another that of Primo de Rivera—the casks in these instances being a wooden vessel Bhaped like a cask but hplding liquid enough for a small swimming bath. If these soleras equal expectations it may be that the .expert judge of sherry will regard one of these in years to come as we now Tegard a Napoleon brandy or some choice vintage port or claret. But the essential difference is that such brandies or vintage wines consist of the stock which was made in a certain year, and which has diminished ever since with every bottle consumed; whereas the sherry solera laid down this year will continue to breed for our great-grandchildren the same quantity and quality' of wine as was first drawn off the cask signed by tho Spanish Dictator or the first President of the Eepublic. I do not know how far back the oldest solera goes, but wo can certainly drink in England today sherry which has been breeding every year from a "forefather" of over a hundred years ago.