Excursion to the south of Spain – Part 1: Jarrez

Having some free time before a lesson booking, I decide to head south for a few days. Although the decision was firm, the timing was a bit impromptu: I was leaving a yoga session one night, and took a few wrong turns, ending up on the freeway. What the hell, let’s go for it! 3 hours later, I’d crossed the border and made it close to Sevilla before camping at midnight.

The next morning saw me up at dawn, but this was still later than some of the farmers started. Sevilla via freeway was a bit tricky to navigate, but by midday I was down in the town of Jarrez de la Fronterra.

I stopped in Jarrez for two reasons: mundanely, to cash more travellers cheques; but also to determine the connection between the name Jarrez and one of my favourite apperatives, Sherry.

I knew that afficionadoes considered true Port to only come from the region of Porto (or the same for Champagne). But I wasn’t aware the same applies for Jarrez/Sherry – the two words meaning the same thing (in fact ‘Sherry’ is labelled ‘Jarrez’ in Spain).

So I took a tour of the Sandeman bodega (wine cellar). The girl guiding us was great, adorned in their trademark hat and cape (Spanish hat and Portuguese cape apparently, so not an authentic look for the region really, but quite distinctive). She had the unfortunate distinction also of naturally emulating the voice every English comedian does when poking fun at a Spaniard who can’t master the English accent. Her technical English was excellent, but trying to comprehend through her inate lisp and rolling ‘r’s and throaty ‘h’s made you really wonder what she was talking about a times.

However, she was very theatrical in her delivery of some very good information. She told how all sherry is made with white grapes in vineyards that are not irrigated, then left for a long time in a loosely corked barrel with no yeast. Sherry’s distinction from regular wine is that the wine is fortified with near-pure alcohol, also distilled from the same grapes. These aging barrels are mixed every few years so that 1/3 of the final batch is removed and bottled, then 1/3 of each subsequently younger barrel is mixed in, up to 4 generations or more. So 4 barrels at 5 years each is called a 20 year sherry, but clearly some of the contents spend much longer than that! The different grape varieties are later blended to give the varieties of sherry.

A lovely town, and very different region – flat as a pancake and close to being a desert – I’m glad I made the detour. But my true destination was Tarifa, at the southern tip, prominent in the way it juts into the Straits of Gibraltar.