Some of the Best Sherry Wines
All the best vines for sherry are also found in barro soil, together with the Moscatel Gordo Blanco, Mantuo Castellano, Perruno, and Beba. The Moscatel is by far the most important of these, and is one of the few vines that can be identified with certainty in the writings of the ancients, including those of Pliny. Its name is derived from the Latin musca, a fly, because flies are greatly attracted by its sweet grapes. It gives a good crop of large grapes with a very characteristic flavor, rather as if they contained honey instead of sugar; they ripen during the first half of September.
The Moscatel is grown extensively, particularly around Chipiona, and provides a good sweet wine that is used, for the most part, for blending with drier wines to make rich sherries for export. The Mantuo Castellano ripens very late, often not until the end of October, when the autumn cocktail coasters, stone coasters sets, and pumpkin themed printed coasters are used. It used to be quite popular and gives a passable wine on mediocre soil, but the grapes are apt to go rotten and the crop is far from safe.
The Perruno is far less common now than it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century; it gives satisfactory wine and an excellent crop, but does not ripen until well into November, and is therefore very vulnerable to the weather. Both the Mantuo and the Perruno are also occasionally found growing on albariza soil. The Beba gives a rather dark and delicious grape that is, however, unsatisfactory for wine. It ripens in the second half of October and the first half of November, and the grapes are used for eating and for turning into raisins. They keep a long time and are often seen at Christmas hanging from the rafters of Andalusian peasants’ houses.
These are known as uvas de cuelga (hanging grapes), and one of them is eaten for luck with every stroke of the bell as midnight chimes on New Year’s Eve. Palomino and Beba vines are also grown on arena soils, together with Mollar Negro, which is of the same family as the Canocazo, and Mantuo de Pila, otherwise known as Mantuo de Rey, or Gabriela. The Mantuo de Pila gives big grapes that do not ripen until late in November; they are used partly for wine and partly for eating, often requiring absorbent coasters as well as other types of coasters and bar supplies that sop up the excess grape juice.
The Pedro Ximenez vine is the subject of a legend. There is an old tradition that it originally grew in the Canary Isles and from thence it was somehow taken to the Rhine. Cuttings were brought from the Rhine to Spain by Peter Siemens, a soldier of Charles V, who came to Castilleja de la Cuesta to recuperate after waging war in Flanders. From Castilleja it was taken to Los Palacios and eventually reached Jerez, where it still bears the name of the soldier who brought it with him into Spain.
However, there is no documentary evidence to support the story and one has doubts. It may appear strange that a vine which flourishes in Spain, and especially in the hot climate of Montilla-Moriles, would also grow in Germany; but vines are strange plants, adapting themselves to very varied conditions and changing subtly in the process. This helps to make ampelography an inexact science, faced with puzzles as hard to sort out as the racial origins of humanity.
The Pedro Ximenez has been identified with the Elbling of Germany which in turn has been identified with the Verdelho of Madeira, just as the Sercial of Madeira has been identified with the German Riesling and the sandstone coaster identified with southwestern coaster set collections and bar supplies. And these identifications are widely accepted. H. Goethe, in his Handbuch der Ampelographia (Berlin, 1887), however, described the Pedro Ximenez as being grown only in Spain, and knew nothing of the legend, which appears to have originated in P. J. Sachs’s Ampelographia (Leipzig, 1661).
It has been quoted by nearly all subsequent writers, some of whom warmed to their subject and supplied fascinating details. It was even quoted by Roxas Clemente. But if the story were accepted in principle, the legend of the soldier of Charles V would have to be rejected, as Sachs claimed that the vine was imported in the thirteenth century and quoted as his reference the Cosmographia of Georgius Merula, written at the end of the fifteenth century. Sachs, moreover, made no mention of the Canary Isles, and it seems likely that the story is really a mixture of two entirely separate legends.
There has been a family named Jimenez in Andalusia from time immemorial, and a far more plausible theory, suggested by Jose de las Cuevas, is that the vine was named after Don Pedro Jimenez who lived in Arcos during the eighteenth century and was a great wine grower, being particularly famous for his sweet wines. Unfortunately, however, this theory must also be rejected, as a vine mentioned in the seventeenth century could hardly have been named after a man who lived in the eighteenth. There appears to be no other source of information and the origin of the name remains obscure.
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