Sherry: An Ancient Beverage Shared with Angels

by Lauren Gilbert

Stilleben mit Trauben auf einer Porzellanschale, zwei Pfirsichen und gefülltem Sherryglas

I have always been very interested in the late Georgian/Regency periods of English history. My reading showed that sherry was a popular beverage of the time, and one of the few stronger beverages that it was socially acceptable for a lady to enjoy. A recent tasting event that I had the privilege to attend led me to read up on the history of sherry, and what a history it has!  A rich and complex subject, I would like to give a general overview.

The roots of sherry go back three thousand years in Spain, where it appears that the Phoenicians brought vines and the knowledge of wine making. The city of Jerez, a key area for the production of sherry, was established by the Phoenicians as Xera. Other cultures contributed to the development of this wine and it was imported to Rome. When the Moors occupied Spain in the 8th century, despite the Muslim prohibition against the consumption of alcohol, they continued the cultivation of grapes for the production of wine for medicinal purposes and for raisins. The area was reclaimed in 1264 by King Alfonso X of Castile, and the wine industry continued under a reward system that affected who could grow what and where. Guild regulations controlled how long wine could be held (aged). From Spain, the wine traveled widely. Sherry was on ship with Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan on their voyages of discovery. Thanks to pirate raids, which led to the sale of sherry elsewhere, it became popular in other areas, especially England. It was already being traded in England during the 12th century.

Then known as sack or Sherish (another reference to Jerez), this wine was known in the Tudor court. Catherine of Aragon mentioned her husband the King keeping the best wines of the Canaries and Sherish for himself. It was a favourite of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, who drank multiple bottles per day. When Sir Francis Drake seized thousands of barrels of sherry in 1587, this wine became extremely fashionable at court, which led to increased demand. Guild restrictions at this time prohibited aging of wines, which meant that the sherry of this time was essentially a very young white wine that required the addition of alcohol for preservation, resulting in what is called a fortified wine. This wine traveled well, and was commonly taken on long voyages. Of course, wars during this period also caused complications.

Delays caused some wine to sit, which resulted in oxidation, intensifying flavours and adding other nuances. In turn, newer sherries were mixed with older, more oxidized wines which also changed the character. Taste for the sweeter, stronger wines led to the addition of brandy to the mix. An attack on the area of Cadiz (near Jerez) having failed, numerous business men from England, Ireland and other places, set up businesses in Spain in the 17th – 19th centuries, to be sure of obtaining the desired quantities of wines. Names such as Sandeman, Harvey, Osborne and others were established at that time. The Peninsular Wars (part of the Napoleonic Wars) in the early 19th century, caused havoc as France attacked and even occupied the area around Jerez. Vines were destroyed and wines were stolen. However, the area rebounded again. Because of the conflict and difficulties, sales slowed and wine sat in casks, which led to an unintended oxidation and a concentration of flavour.

It is time to stop for a moment to consider the process of making sherry and the final product. True sherry was, and is, made only in Andalusia, in southwestern Spain. The process has literally evolved over centuries, and has adapted as rules and tastes change. A white wine is produced from two main varieties of grapes: the Palomino and Pedro Ximenez (a sweet grape). After fermentation, alcohol (originally a distilled grape liquor, subsequently a neutral brandy) is added, which increases the alcoholic content. Traditionally, sherry was quite dry, but it could be sweetened (and frequently was) with other additives ranging from sweet grape juice to sugar. (Adding sugar to sweeten wine goes back to the Romans). As time and changes in the guild rules and procedures occurred, more variations in flavour came forth. New wines were, and are still, blended with older ones in a process called Solera.  The different types of sherry produced are Manzanilla and Fino (both dry), Amontillado and Oloroso (dry to medium-dry), and cream (sweet).

A key issue that gives sherry its character is the fact that air is deliberately let into the barrels to cause oxidation. According to WINDOWS ON THE WORLD COMPLETE WINE COURSE by Kevin Zraly, letting air in not only causes the required oxidation, it results in a loss of about 3% per day to evaporation, which he called “The Angel’s share”. (p. 158). (Although tastes were leaning toward the sweeter wines, like port and madeira, I suspect the sherry of the late Georgian/Regency era may have been a somewhat drier style, but there is no way to be sure.)  In the 19th century, the guild was abolished which allowed for storage and aging of wines, which led to other modifications that changed the wine over time to the wide range of types we can now enjoy. Sherry was very popular during the Victorian era, and continued to be a favoured beverage into the 20th century. However, many people think of sherry in terms of the very sweet cream sherry, not knowing that there is a wide range of choice. Because of the sweetness of cream sherry, many consider sherry as specifically a dessert wine.  However, certain varieties (especially the dry) are delicious with savory food.


Sherry glasses-photo by the author

Serving sherry is interesting as well. I did not find a reference to a specific “sherry glass” prior to the Victorian era. It is worth noting that wine glasses were smaller in earlier times. I have some antique wine glasses that hold only three to four ounces, which is considerably smaller than modern wine glasses. Sherry glasses seem to have become popular during the mid-Victorian era. I have three different types of glasses (see photo). Despite their different shapes, each only holds about two ounces. It seems possible that the slightly smaller shape became popular for sherry due to its being a fortified, and somewhat stronger, wine. However, there is no requirement for using a special sherry glass-sherry can be enjoyed in a regular wine glass. (Although I do believe that the special glass adds to the experience!)  Although the sherry we enjoy today may not be exactly the same as that consumed in earlier times, it can provide a sort of shared experience, a touch of elegance and an idea of something in which someone of a previous era indulged.


Sources include:

Zraly, Kevin. WINDOWS ON THE WORLD COMPLETE WINE COURSE. New York: Sterling Publishing Co. 2002.

Spanish Fiestas on line. “Sherry Wine.” HERE

Wall Street Journal on-line. “Sherry’s Long, Rich and Uncertain Past by Lettie Teague. 2/19/2011. HERE

Sherry.wine. “History of Sherry.” HERE

The Passionate Foodie. “History of Sherry: 18th to 19th Century (Part IV).”  HERE 
Image: Wikimedia Commons- by Otto Scholderer HERE 

Photo of sherry glasses taken by the author.

Lauren Gilbert lives in Florida with her husband. Her first book, HEYERWOOD A Novel, was released in 2011, while her second novel, A RATIONAL ATTACHMENT, is in process. Lauren is a long-time member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. She does enjoy the occasional glass of sherry (medium dry). Visit her website here for more information.

The Doubtful Triumph of James VI and I, May 7th 1603

By Mark Patton.

When, on the 24th March, 1603, Queen Elizabeth I died without issue, the Crown of England, as had long been planned, passed to her cousin, James VI of Scotland. James had been in secret correspondence with Elizabeth's Chief Minister, Sir Robert Cecil, and, on hearing of Elizabeth's death, he left Edinburgh on 5th April, taking the road south towards London. He was clearly in no hurry, accepting hospitality along the way from numerous English aristocrats, presumably with envoys from the English and Scottish courts riding up and down the road for less leisured discussions along the way. Eventually he reached Cecil's home at Theobald's Palace, near Cheshunt, where he stayed for some days.

Theobald's Palace, from The Gentleman's Magazine, 1836 (image is in the Public Domain).

The people of London were keen to greet their new king, but he was less enthusiastic about spending time among them. He entered the city with his retinue on 7th May. It is unclear what pageants had been arranged, but, whatever they were, he seems to have cancelled them, passing hastily along Bishopsgate and Cheapside on his progress towards the Palace of Whitehall. Perhaps he was concerned about his security (his mother had, after all, been executed by the English), or perhaps he was worried about contracting the plague, which had claimed many lives in London during the preceding months.

James VI and I, by Paul Van Somer, c 1620, Royal Collection (image is in the Public Domain).

James I (as he was in England) was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 25th July. It was customary for a new monarch to process through the city from the Tower of London to Westminster on the day of the coronation, and a pageant had certainly been arranged for this, with the construction of five triumphal arches by the theatre-set designers of London (considered as the "body" of the ceremony) and a text (considered as the "soul") by the playwright, Thomas Dekker, to be performed by actors, together with the children of city dignitaries, but this, also, was cancelled at the king's insistence.

Dekker's text for the pageant (image is in the Public Domain).

The pageant finally took place on 15th March 1604 (in our terms - at the time, the new calendar year did not begin until 25th March, hence the discrepancy in the dates printed on the documents), although it is unclear whether the king processed from the Tower, or from Theobald's Palace. Two additional arches were commissioned, and a new text from Ben Jonson for scenes to be enacted in front of them.

Ben Jonson, by Abraham Van Bleyenberch, National Portrait Gallery (image is in the Public Domain).

Jonson's text for the pageant, with the king styled as a Roman emperor (image is in the Public Domain).

Eighty joiners, sixty carpenters, six turners, six labourers and twelve sawyers were employed to build the ceremonial structures. Two actors rode out to greet the king, one dressed as Saint George, the other as Saint Andrew. Another actor (probably a boy, but dressed as a woman in "antique robes"), representing "The Genius of the Place" greeted him on his entry to the city.

"I am the place's genius, whence now springs
A vine whose youngest branch shall produce kings
This little world of men, this precious stone,
That sets out Europe: this (the glass alone),
Where the neat sun each morn himself attires,
And gilds it with his repercussive fires,
Altar of love and sphere of the majestic,
Green Neptune's minion, but whole virgin worth ...
Not frighted with the threats of foreign kings,
But held up in that gowned state I have,
By twice twelve fathers politic and grave,
Who with a sheathed sword and silken law,
Do keep, within weak walls, millions in awe."

The echo of John of Gaunt's speech in Shakespeare's Richard II may have been unconscious on Dekker's part: Sir Robert Cecil attended a private production in 1595, but Dekker is more likely to have seen it performed at The Globe in 1601.

Wood-cut of one of the Triumphal Arches through which the king's procession moved. This one is recorded as having been paid for by Italian merchants resident in London. British Museum (image is in the Public Domain).

Wood-cut of another of the Triumphal Arches, this one topped with plants and flowers to represent "The Garden of Abundance." British Museum (image is in the Public Domain).

The whole pageant was styled as a Roman Triumph, with "a select number of aldermen and commoners, like so many Roman aediles," being presented to the king as having undertaken the work to prepare it. Ovid and Virgil were quoted, and the name of Londinium invoked. In all likelihood it was influenced by Albrecht Durer's monumental depiction of the (wholly imaginary) "Triumph" of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, produced almost a century earlier.

Scene from "The Triumph of Maximilian I, by Albrecht Durer, 1512-1528, Albertina, Vienna (image is in the Public Domain).

A note is appended to Dekker's text. "To the Reader. Reader, you must vnderstand, that a regard, being had that his majestie should not be wearied with teadious speeches: a great part of those which are in this booke set downe, were left vnspoken: so that thou doest receive them here as they should have been delivered, not as they were."

Perhaps, after all, King James (who, like every good Renaissance prince, had surely read Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars) found his undeserved Triumph as tedious as the Emperor Vespasian found the one he had earned on the battlefield.

Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. His novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.

Poet's Corner

Karen V. Wasylowski

"The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living"

Epitaph on the memorial to T.S.Eliot.

The South Transept of Westninster Abbey is a special place when it comes to British culture.   It is here the mortal remains (or at least a memorial) of some of the greatest poets, playwrights and writers in English literature have been laid to rest, beginning with Geoffrey Chaucer in 1556.  Over the centuries the tradition has grown, and only a chosen few have been considered worthy of this honor.

You can see how brilliant this man is...

Chaucer actually owed his Westminster burial more to his position, Clerk of Works of the Palace of Westminster, than to his writing, but in 1556 he was moved the South Transept, along with Edmund Spencer, British Poet and writer of 'The Faerie Queen', and the popular corner began to take off.  Lord Byron is commemorated there, William Shakespeare as well (although his actual burial place is Stratford-upon-Avon)

Samuel Horsley, Dean of Westminster in 1796, was said to have tartly refused the request for actress Kitty Clive to be buried in the Abbey:

"...if we do not draw some line in this theatrical ambition to mortuary fame, we shall soon make Westminster Abbey little better than a Gothic Green Room!"

The memorials take several forms, either a stone slab on the floor or more elaborate carved monuments. The Bronte sisters are commemorated together, on one slab, which was not unveiled until 1947, the four founders of the Royal Ballet were commemorated in 2009.  

The inscription over the grave of Ben Jonson is misspelled, ("O Rare Ben Johnson" )

Robert Browning's grave is adjacent to Alfred Tennyson, (Elizabeth is buried in Florence), Charles Dickens' is at home there too, as well as, Thomas Hardy, Handel, Henry Irving, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Memorials include our wonderful Jane Austen, Keats, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Browning, Robert Burns, Lewis Carroll, the Eliots, T. S. and George, Jenny Lind, Longfellow, Shelley, Thackeray, Dylan Thomas, Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis, D.H. Lawrence, and on and on...

As floor and wall space began to run out, the decision was taken to install a stained glass memorial window (unveiled in 1994 in memory of Edward Horton Hubbard), and it is here that new names are added in the form of inscribed panes of glass. There is room for 20 names, and currently there are six names on this window, with a new entry (Elizabeth Gaskell) unveiled on 25 September 2010.

There are even some of those nasty actors laying around in there.  David Garrick, an actor, playwright and produce, died in 1779.  His acting style was less bombastic than his predecessors, more natural.

Dame Sybil Thorndike, who has the distinction of having a play, Saint Joan, written specifically for her by George Bernard Shaw, and...

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier. Olivier is buried alongside some of the people he portrayed in theatre and film, including King Henry V, General John Burgoyne, Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding and William III of England and II of Scotland.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karen V. Wasylowski is the author of two books.  Her first born, "Darcy and Fitzwilliam," is a sequel to Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice".  Her second book, "Sons and Daughters" is a sequel to "Darcy and Fitzwilliam"  Both books can be purchased here on Amazon.com.