Wines from Andalusia

Andalusia, spreading across the south of Spain, is sun, flamenco, bulls, and the art of living. It's the region that best depicts the Spain described last century by such illustrious travelers as Richard Ford and Prosper Merimee.

Andalusians live their culture with passion, and wine forms an essential part of that culture. Wine is the gauge that marks social relations in Andalusia, it invariably accompanies the ritual of having "tapas", something that has transcended its gastronomic purpose to become a way of life.

The Andalusian wines, those from Jerez, from Montilla-Moriles, Malaga, and Condado de Huelva, belong to a line of "old" wines that were born in the 16th and 17th centuries at the time of the great seafaring adventures, like port, marsala and madeira. These were wines that could cross oceans without losing their qualities. Wines rich in alcohol, vigorous and delicate, complex, full of subtleties.

What's particularly interesting is the huge variety of Andalusian wines within that context. The finos and manzanillas, amontillados, olorosos, palo cortados and sweet Pedro Ximenez and moscatels make up a real paradise for wine enthusiasts.

Andalusian wines are the most universal but also the most genuinely Spanish ones, wines that don't follow any outside model. They are truly unique, with overwhelming personality, and are frequently imitated all over the world.

Jerez-Xeres-Sherry and Manzanilla de Sanlucar de Barrameda
1996 is an important year for the world sherry trade, since from January 1st, only wines from this Cadiz D.O (designation of origin) have the legal right to use the word "sherry" on their labels.

One of the main things to point out about wines from the province of Cadiz is that they, like port, are heirs to and suvivors from an age when there was a different style of wine-making, so we're talking about original, inimitable wines.

There is an infinite range of subtleties in sherry: greater or lesser degrees of sweetness, more or less aging, wines classified as finos or manzanilla, pale dry, medium, amontillado viejo, cream, oloroso, palo cortado, sweet etc.

Recently, more and more made like young white wines, from the Palomino grape, have been appearing. They are very light, with limited aroma and flavour, but they are improving steadily.

Montilla - Moriles
The Pedro Ximenez grape, used only for sweet wines in Jerez, is the main variety in the region, occupying 70% of the vineyards included in the Denominacion de Origen (designation of origin), and lending its own special temperament to the making of the area's characteristic wines.

Montilla-Moriles coincides with Jerez in its method of classifying and categorising wines, such as finos, amontillados, olorosos, palo cortados, rayas and so on. All are produced by the traditional system of solera (topping off older wines with the more recently made sherries) and criaderas ("nurseries" for all the wines up to the oldest level, the solera).

The main character among the Montilla-Moriles wines is the fino, with its yeasty aroma, produced by the layer of flor on the wine (change, correct)

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