If it’s Feria time then it must be…Manzanilla time!
When the feria season in Spain is in full swing and local ferias are keeping you awake until the small hours, it is probably not a bad time to dwell awhile on that king of beverages: sherry.
No-one has, to the best of my knowledge, explained exactly why sherry is inextricably linked to Spanish ferias, but it unquestionably is. Literally hundreds of thousands of bottles get drunk in every village or big town fair, where ever it be and practically wherever you look. It is the feria drink par excellence, and no-one has ever (well, practically never) been seen to order a gin and tonic or a campari soda at a feria bar or in a caseta.
In fact, the notice boards say it all “Media manzanilla x Euros” – and that is the yardstick for everything else. If you find yourself in a caseta where the price of the half-bottle of sherry is high, then everything else will be proportionally expensive as well.
In the good old days, everyone drank sherry at ferias out of glass catavinos, the typical sherry glass. Regrettably, these are now reserved for the best private casetas, and the norm is the plastic thimble. For those who are allergic to drinking heaven’s nectar from such improper receptacles, the only alternative is to buy one of those glasses on a string, which you are supposed to hang around your neck for the duration of the festivites. They actually work quite well, and do not spill over unless one tries dancing sevillanas.
Another curiousity is the fact that all feria sherry is drunk in half bottles. Not so long ago this was the usual measure for any dry sherry year-round, since as André Simon went on record as saying “A bottle of fino, once opened, will go off between luncheon and dinner”. At that time sherry was not mechanically stabilised to the same degree as currently, so one literally opened the bottle and threw the cork away (please note, cork – not the anti-aesthetic metal caps they now use, well, most of them anyway).
Nowadays the only dry sherry bottled in halves is for the ferias, and there is another quirk which seems odd, but is I swear true, and that is that the feria sherry is not the same as the regular stuff. Any hardened sherry drinker, of which I am pleased to count myself as one, can immediately tell that the feria fino or manzanilla is a couple of grades down the line quality-wise. I remember pushing this point at Domecq’s many years ago without success, but it is not something which the producers are proud to admit. Much later however I was quietly taken aside to be assured that I was indeed right.
The logic behind this is quite understandable: the average feria-goer only drinks sherry in any quantity once a year, and since the stuff is going to be swigged down at a huge rate of knots no-one ever stops to think about what they are drinking anyway – so what the hell!
So what about the current battle: fino versus manzanilla. Up until about ten years ago it was definitely not the done thing to drink manzanilla pretty much anywhere outside Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where it comes from. Never properly marketed, always the poor cousin of proud Jerez’s fino, cheaper and generally nastier, why drink it anyway?
However with diet-conscious Spaniards turning more and more to ‘light’ versions of everything in sight, someone in Sanlúcar had the bright idea of producing a ‘light’ sherry, this turning out to be a manzanilla with one degree less of alcohol. And I suppose if you are drinking sherry at the feria from midnight until six in the morning, one degree less presents a substantial overall reduction in the alcohol consumed. It caught on, and before you could say Tio Pepe or La Ina, the manzanilla brands of La Guita, La Gitana, Solear and others had swept the board. But as usual in such cases the gap subsequently narrowed. The Jerezanos brough the alcohol content in fino down to the same level, and the price of the best manzanillas climbed to the same as that of fino. But people still keep drinking it.
Don’t expect a died-in-the-wool Jerezano to ever order a copa of manzanilla, not at a feria or anywhere. But all over the rest of Spain the feria drink is manzanilla. On a more sober note, you could have bought a Sanlúcar bodega for practically nothing 20 years ago, indeed they could hardly give them away, but now they change hands – when they occasionally do – at exorbitant prices, and it looks like this trend will continue.
But let’s be honest, a manzanilla is not as good as a fino, and never will be. It is generally unsophisticated drinkers, in tapas bars and the like, who order manzanilla. Nevertheless it is true that being made in a seaside town you can taste the sea in it. As Sanlúcar has become more built up, local lore mainatins that the bodegas on the lower ground facing the estuary no longer receive the sea breezes, and their wine has changed in character, while the bodegas on the higher level (of which Barbadillo is the largest), still preserve this unusual and attractive characteristic.
Another story, again true, is that if you take a barrel of manzanilla to Jerez, inland, and vice-versa, the manzanilla will become fino and the fino will become manzanilla. Which is why every large Jerez producer has a maturing warehouse in Sanlúcar. Miracles of that wonderful living creature – which is wine.
So, if we are going off to the feria, which brands do we order? Well, as at any time, the better-known brands are usually the safest. Solear, from Barbadilla (who also produce the ubiquitous best-selling Castillo de San Diego) is a top-ranker, and the price is above the norm. La Goya, from Delgado Zuleta, is termed a manzanilla pasada (or in the modern idiom, manzanilla fina) and is excellent, not easy to find, but worth the effort. Argüeso is one of the oldest Sanlúcar bodegas, and their wine is superb, but harder to get hold of outside the immediate area. The Rainiera Pérez Martín bodega only makes one wine, La Guita, and it sells all it can produce with hardly any going for export. The price has shot through the roof since the new owners took over although it is easy to find. However there are those who maintain that it is not a true manzanilla.
La Gitana, from Hidalgo, is another classic, the bodega having being established nearly 200 years ago. Although they export 70% of their production, it is not difficult to buy this brand. If you find yourself in the presence of any of the wines from the Orleans-Borbon bodega, you may bow your head. The manzanilla fina, the La Celada, the Torre Breva and the La Ballena are top-grade wines, as good as any you will ever find. Barbadillo acquired 50% of the 110 year-old bodega. Finding it is another matter, since the producer has a policy of supplying bars and restaurants ony, so as not to get caught up in the supermarket oferta race.
There are much cheaper brands, which proliferate at the ferias, such as Victoria, El Rocio, Barón, and others. These are okay, but don’t over-indulge if you want to come back to the feria the next day! Oh, and whatever you do, don’t forget to drink it very cold.
