Alexander Fleming allegedly once declared: “If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life.” Swaying down Jerez’s maze of cobbled streets, vaguely high on its favourite tipple, I think he might have been on to something.
Jerez de la Frontera – to give it the full, muscular title – is the place where it all begins: sherry Ground Zero. The name itself is a linguistic fossil, taken from the Moorish “sherish”, which the English tongue-mangled into “sherry”. For me, the very word conjures up the bourgeois pretensions of the 1970s: Coronation Street’s Emily Bishop, gingerly ordering a small schooner in the Rovers Return. Something for the middle-class lady: sweet, discreet and straight to your feet.
