Jerez de la Frontera

Walk through the old centre of Jerez de la Frontera on a warm afternoon and the air itself can smell faintly of wine, drifting from long whitewashed bodegas where sherry has been ageing in oak for generations. This Andalusian town gave its name to the drink, and the English word “sherry” is how sixteenth-century English merchants pronounced “Xeres”, as Jerez was then written. On the Small Group Tour of Spain & Portugal, mature travellers spend a day exploring Jerez on foot, visiting a sherry bodega for a tour and tasting, before continuing to Cádiz and returning to Seville.

A frontier town: the history behind Jerez de la Frontera

The Romans knew this corner of Andalusia, and under Muslim rule the town was known as Sherish, the name from which both “Jerez” and “sherry” descend. Jerez first submitted to Castile in 1261, but after it joined the Mudéjar revolt of 1264, Alfonso X of Castile besieged the town and took it for good that year. For more than two centuries afterwards it stood close to the border with the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, the last Muslim state in the Iberian Peninsula, which held out until 1492.

That is the origin of “de la Frontera”: it means “of the frontier”. Several towns along the old border carry the same suffix, among them Arcos de la Frontera and Vejer de la Frontera, and the name is a reminder that for much of the later Middle Ages this was garrison country, raided and defended, as much as it was wine country.

The Alcázar and the cathedral

The clearest survivor of Muslim Jerez is the Alcázar, a twelfth-century Almohad fortress whose ochre walls still enclose a quiet compound of gardens. Inside are the former mosque, converted after the conquest into a chapel dedicated to Santa María la Real, and a set of Arab baths, while the later Villavicencio Palace within the walls has a tower housing a camera obscura that projects views of the city. After 1264 the Alcázar became the seat of the Castilian governors, so a single visit spans both sides of the frontier story.

A short walk away stands the cathedral, built on the site of the town’s Great Mosque. Work began in 1695 and the building was finished in 1778, so its architecture blends Gothic structure with Baroque and Neoclassical detail. It served as a collegiate church until 1980, when it was raised to cathedral status. Among its treasures is a painting of the young Virgin by Francisco de Zurbarán, and its bell tower, Gothic-Mudéjar in its lower stages, is thought to rise over the base of the old minaret.

The sherry triangle and the albariza vineyards

Sherry is not made in Jerez alone. The heart of the region is the so-called sherry triangle, formed by Jerez de la Frontera, El Puerto de Santa María on the Bay of Cádiz and Sanlúcar de Barrameda at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. Sherry is one of the oldest denominations of origin in Spain, and its rules govern where the grapes grow and where the wine is aged.

The vineyards sit on albariza, a chalk-white soil rich in limestone that holds moisture through the long, dry summer. The main grape is Palomino, a high-yielding variety that makes a fairly neutral, low-acid white wine. That neutrality is the point: the character of most sherry comes not from the grape but from what happens in the cellar afterwards. Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel are grown mainly for the sweet wines.

Sack, Falstaff and the English sherry trade

England has drunk the wines of Jerez for more than four centuries. In Shakespeare’s day sherry was one of the wines known as “sack”, or more precisely “sherris-sack”, and in Henry IV, Part 2 Sir John Falstaff delivers a famous speech in praise of the drink, beginning “A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it”.

Sherry also played a part in the war between England and Spain. When Sir Francis Drake raided the harbour of Cádiz in 1587, setting fire to ships being readied for the Armada, he is said to have carried off a large quantity of sherry as part of his plunder. Whatever the truth of the story, the English taste for the wine endured.

Inside a bodega: the cathedrals of wine

The bodegas of Jerez are often called cathedrals of wine, and the description is architectural as much as poetic. The so-called cathedral style appeared in the early nineteenth century, as exports grew: long aisles separated by masonry arches on slender pillars, with central arches that can reach around fifteen metres. Thick walls, sixty centimetres or more and painted white, keep the temperature steady, while small high windows let rising warm air escape.

Every element serves the wine. Bodegas were laid out to catch the cool, damp westerly wind from the Atlantic, the poniente, and to shield the casks from the hot, dry levante blowing from the east. Floors of albero, a packed sandy clay, were traditionally sprinkled with water in summer to raise the humidity.

Flor, solera and the styles of sherry

Two things make sherry unlike other wines. The first is flor, a living layer of yeast that forms on the surface of the wine inside barrels left partly empty. Flor protects the wine from oxygen and gives the palest sherries their sharp, saline character. This is called biological ageing, and it depends on the humid air the bodegas are built to hold.

The second is the solera and criadera system. The casks are arranged in tiers by age: the oldest wine forms the solera, traditionally the row nearest the floor, and above it sit the criaderas, or nurseries, of progressively younger wine. When wine is drawn for bottling, a portion is taken from the solera, traditionally no more than a third, and it is replaced with wine from the next youngest tier, and so on up to the newest wine. No cask is ever emptied, so each bottle is a blend that carries a trace of every year the solera has been running.

From those two processes come the main styles. Fino is pale and dry, aged entirely under flor; manzanilla is made the same way but must be aged in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where the sea air keeps the flor especially thick. Amontillado begins life as a fino, loses its flor and then ages in contact with oxygen, turning amber and nutty. Oloroso is aged without flor from the start, emerging deep brown, rich and still dry. Pedro Ximénez, made from sun-dried grapes of that name, is dark, intensely sweet and syrupy. For how these wines sit at the Spanish table alongside tapas, and how they compare with Portugal’s port, see our guide to food and wine across Spain and Portugal.

Can non-drinkers enjoy the bodega visit?

Yes: the bodega visit is a tour as well as a tasting, and much of its interest lies in the architecture, the casks and the explanation of how flor and the solera work. Tasting is a personal choice, so you are free to sip a little, smell rather than drink, or simply decline. Sherry is a fortified wine and stronger than table wine, so it is worth pacing yourself on a day that continues on to Cádiz.

Horses and flamenco: what else Jerez is known for

Beyond sherry, Jerez is famous for two other traditions, and while neither is part of the tour’s day here, both are worth knowing about. The town has long been known for breeding horses, and it is home to the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art. Its origins go back to 1973, when Álvaro Domecq Romero first staged a show called “How the Andalusian Horses Dance”; King Juan Carlos granted it the title of Royal School in 1987.

Jerez is also one of the great centres of flamenco. The bulería, a fast form in a twelve-beat rhythm that leaves room for improvisation, is closely associated with the town, and the Santiago neighbourhood is one of its historic flamenco quarters. The Centro Andaluz de Flamenco, an archive and resource centre, occupies the Pemartín Palace there, and each year in late February and early March the Festival de Jerez fills the town’s theatres and flamenco clubs. Travellers on the tour see flamenco the evening before, at a show with a tapas dinner in Seville.

How much walking is involved on the Jerez day?

The tour explores Jerez on foot, so expect a good deal of walking there, followed by more at your own pace in Cádiz. The tour is rated Level 2, Moderate: participants should be able to manage three to five hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to eight kilometres on uneven ground, and to climb and descend stairs. Bodega floors are often packed earth or sand, so comfortable, closed walking shoes are a sensible choice.

How do Jerez and Cádiz fit into one day?

The day runs as a loop from Seville: first Jerez, then Cádiz, then back to the same Seville hotel, so there is no packing or change of room. Jerez is the structured part of the day, explored on foot and including the bodega tour and tasting. In Cádiz the group views the city at its own pace, which suits a compact, sea-girt old town that rewards unhurried wandering; our article on the history and sights of Cádiz suggests what to look for. For how the three cities connect as a route, read our Seville, Jerez and Cádiz itinerary.

Jerez on the Spain and Portugal route

Jerez comes near the end of a 24-day journey that begins in Barcelona and finishes in Granada. The group is based in Seville for three nights, and on the morning before Jerez a local guide takes the group to the Alcázar, the cathedral and the Giralda, with a walk through the Barrio de Santa Cruz; our guide to the highlights of Seville covers that day in depth. From Seville the tour continues to Córdoba and Granada, and the full day-by-day shape of the journey is set out in our Spain and Portugal itinerary. The group numbers up to 16 travellers, and solo travellers are welcome. Full details, including the activity level and inclusions, are on the Spain and Portugal tour page.

Jerez rewards a little knowledge more than most towns. Once you know that its name records a medieval border, that its cellars were designed around the Atlantic wind, and that the glass in your hand may hold a trace of wine laid down decades ago, a single day there becomes a journey through seven centuries of Andalusian history. It is a fitting prelude to the last chapter of the tour, among the Moorish monuments of Córdoba and Granada.