Got away from our Airbnb in what we believed was good time.
Imagine our surprise a couple of hours later when we crossed the border to Spain and realised we’d lost an hour, and we no longer had time for a leisurely lunch en route but instead had to hustle to get to our hotel in time for the Sherry tasting tour we had booked.
Our hotel is in Jerez and is part of the massive Tio Pepe complex. We had time just to get our luggage to our rooms and find a parking building for the car before walking round the corner for the start of the tour at 4:30.
All the alcohol tasting tours I’ve ever done have been quite informal events in small groups. This was massive, it was more like a Universal Studios tour. There were over a hundred people, split into groups according to language. There were two English speaking groups, ours had around thirty people. Our guide was short and bossy and gave off school teacher vibes, although she did warm up later on. We began with a tourist train tour of the complex, I kid you not, and we then proceeded on foot around a number of rooms, and there was one promotional video to watch as well. Essentially the man Gonzalez started the company in 1835 to make wine and named it after his uncle who was helping him out, uncle (tio) Pepe. It started small but has grown, taking over the town, and expanding across the world to multiple different locations and now making all sorts of alcoholic beverages.
After an hour we were finally brought to the tasting room. We’d ordered the most expensive option, five of their highest quality wines. I would call them sherries, but they didn’t, I don’t know why. My favourite was a thick, sweet, creamy one that was reminiscent of molasses. I didn’t like the dry ones.
After the tour we went back to the rooftop bar for aperitifs and to watch the sunset. I wanted something nonalcoholic but there was nothing available so I had a cocktail that was orange juice mixed with sherry, fairly low alcohol I’m sure. Not sure why the barman couldn’t have just given me orange juice?
My Spanish has come back to me very well, after some crash course revision on the car trip, but it is far from perfect. That may explain the drinks confusion. I also learned in my research today for the first time about the Spanish practice of distinción where you pronounce the letter z and also c, but only before i and e, with a “th” sound. This is not a true lisp as it is not used on the letter s. The story about everyone copying some lisping King in the past is unfortunately apocryphal. There are apparently some places in the South of Spain where they don’t lisp any letters, and others where they lisp everything, including the s, but these are considered low class. When Spanish speakers from elsewhere try to speak in distinción, it is hard because they have to think about how every word they speak is spelled, so often instead they’ll just sprinkle the “th” sound about randomly in their speech, which makes them easy to spot.
As it was getting dark we drifted into the old town, wandering around until we found a well reviewed restaurant and had tapas at an outside table amongst the locals. It was warm and still and very pleasant outside, as we wended our way back through the streets to our hotel. How I would love to be able to eat outside more often at home, without chilly winds driving you inside!
Simon is enjoying our wee break over the last few days from the seemingly incessant parade of castles, palaces, and churches we’ve had to endure recently. I could do with a break from all this excessive eating and drinking.