This is a novelty for me: I am writing this post while it is still daylight in Spain!
Usually I don’t get to the posts until late in the evening after we have been out all day. But today, Wednesday, the weather is changing for the cooler and we were only out for a while. The change began yesterday when the formerly blue sky began to show some clouds. When we woke today, it was in the low 50s and the sky was overcast and has remained that way. Yesterday, everyone was in shirtsleeves and today there are jackets and lots of quilted vests. It was even too cool to sit outside for breakfast.
On Tuesday we returned to a bodega (a place which makes sherry) which we had visited in 2020. Bodegas Tradición is a small but important winery which produces about 40,000 liters (around 10.5 thousand gallons) of sherry aged 20 or 30 years. Everything there is done by hand with 14 people. It is a vastly different scale to many of the other local sherry bodegas in the “Sherry triangle” such as Lustau. The 90-minute tour, for just 4 visitors, was informative. I think what we learned would have applied to most bodegas 100 or 125 years ago. The bodega seemed to be huge and filled with many barrels, but they only have about 1,500. Blending the sherry requires moving liquid from barrel to barrel as it ages. Of course, it is much more complicated than that with lots of science involved, which interested me.
There are a few things which make this tour stand out for us. One is all the detail we got last time and this time. The next is the very careful explanations as we the various sherries. Each type of sherry has its own method of production and certification, to say nothing of its distinctive taste. But we have had similar experiences in other bodegas. What makes this unique is the Bodegas Tradición art gallery. Near the tasting area they have a climate-controlled gallery with paintings dating as far back as the 1300s up to the 19th century. It is quite an eclectic collection. After the tasting, we walked through the gallery with a final glass of sherry (Pedro Ximénez) looking at paintings by artists whose names we often recognized such as El Greco, Goya, Murillo, and so on. It sort of like going to the Proado in Madrid except there are no other people and you get to have wine.
We walked to Bodegas Tradición via d route we hadn’t taken before. We were surprised / dismayed / concerned by the number of empty / closed shops and how dirty the streets and sidewalks were. It was a aspect of Jerez we had not seen much of before.
I added pictures to the pictures page.
