A sherry time had by all

Hidalgo-La Gitana

In the Sherry Triangle, the bodegas that benefit most from the moist river and salty ocean air are in Sanlucar de Barrameda, a vacation town also known for its prawns and summer horse races on the beach.

One big producer here is Hidalgo-La Gitana, which dates its sherry-making to 1792. The bodega is a sprawling compound in the center of the city, and its owner, Javier Hidalgo, a slight, elegant man with slicked-back hair, walked me through the endless rows of his family's sherry barrels, across a patio of caged doves and dripping bougainvillea, and down some stairs to a building that had the feel of an underground bunker.

Inside the bunker, he flicked on a fluorescent light and found the palo cortado. "This wine is not an accident," he said. "We very much make this wine, and it takes generations of a family to make this wine."

He plunged his tasting cane in, and poured a sherry rainbow into some glasses. He sniffed, swirled. He tossed the wine around the glass so hard to get the top notes popping that it splashed over his hands, his pants, onto the floor.

"Iodine, shellfish," he said, inhaling into the glass and dissecting the nose.

"Mahogany, old furniture," he went on, and we both took a sip and waited for the mystery of the palo cortado to kick in. He said: "It has the finesse of an amontillado. The structure of an oloroso. The freshness of a manzanilla."

In the bunker, Hidalgo lamented the inefficiency of the cortado. He has now devoted 23 barrels to making it, each slowly aging, then mixing into the next. It was all wasted space in a way, considering he sells only 800 bottles a year, for charity.

Calle de la Banda de la Playa, 42; Sanlucar de Barrameda, Cadiz; lagitana.es.

The New York Times

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