A sherry time had by all

Bodega Gutierrez Colosia

The space felt like a dark cathedral, cool and damp, and hanging lanterns glowed against the old arches and the faces of the big oak barrels.

Resting his tasting cane over his shoulder like a hunting rifle, Juan Carlos Gutierrez walked to the back, through a door, and into a chamber where he kept his oldest, most prized creations. He removed the cap from one barrel, plunged the cane into the liquid and began the intricate pour: A flick of the cane up fast, letting the amber-colored sherry drip from the flute at the bottom of the cane like a rainbow. It fell in a perfect stream, and landed several feet later into the pit of a glass.

"I cannot tell you how to make this wine," he says, handing the glass to me. It was a surprising statement, considering that Gutierrez has been making sherry wine all his life in El Puerto de Santa Maria, one of the three points on the Sherry Triangle.

What he meant, of course, was that he couldn't explain that specific sherry. But he insisted on giving me an overview of the process before I had a sip. Think of making sherry as the opposite of making other types of wine, he told me.

In traditional winemaking, for instance, the vintner is mainly dependent on the natural world for the quality of the wine. The terroir of the grapes, what the weather was like the year that they grew there and how well they aged. With sherry, none of these factors matter. The only grape that sherry-makers here use and that grows well in the dusty, sun-baked soil of Andalusia is the palomino, a small, lightly colored variety. Vintages are also irrelevant since the sherry process doesn't rely on a particular year. It relies on all of them.

Tasting his own palo cortado, Gutierrez had no idea how old the original batch was. It could be 50 years old. Could be older.

Avenida Bajamr, 40. El Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz. For visiting hours, seegutierrez-colosia.com.