Mi primera visita a la playa

"My First Visit to the Beach"

Yesterday we took a field trip to Jerez de la Frontera to visit a winery that is one of the only three makers of authentic Sherry. All three of these wineries are in Spain. This particular winery makes three types of sherry among many other types of wine. Sherry is just a particular type of wine that comes from this particular area of Spain. The word sherry is actually an English adaptation of the word Jerez which is why the only authentic sherry in the world comes from this area. The three types of sherry are called fino, amontillado and oloroso. Fino is the palest and driest because as it ferments there is a layer of yeast that separates the wine from the oxygen. This prevents any oxidation (which creates a darker color) and allows the yeast to convert most of the sugar to alochol. In the Oloroso, the yeast dies and therefore it remains sweeter. Also, it oxidizes and turns a darker color. The Amontillado involves a combination of aging with and without the layer of yeast so it is more of a semi-sweet sherry and isn't as dark as the Oloroso. At the end of the tour we got to taste the Fino and a different sweet wine. I'm not a huge fan of wine but I did enjoy learning about it! Here are a few pictures I took throughout the tour. If you'd like to see more I've uploaded them to facebook.

This first picture is the bottle of dry fino sherry. Tio Pepe sherries are shipped all over the world so if you're interested in trying it I'm sure we could find it in the US.

This is a walkway between the different "bodegas" or wine cellars. Notice that grapes are growing above.

They've been leaving sherry out for the mice since the winery was opened. These are pictures of different generations of mice that learned to climb the ladder to get to the sherry. If you're interested you can see videos on youtube. Just search for sherry mice or something like that.

This is a picture of a barrel of sherry aging. You can see the characteristic layer of yeast growing on the top.

This is a view of one of the bodegas filled with barrels of sherry or some other type of wine. The smell inside was unbelievable. Each bodega had its own unique smell depending on the type of wine aging inside. You could tell which ones had the yeast growing on top because they smelled a little bit like bread.

After our winery tour we traveled a little further to Cádiz to visit the beach. I was very excited beause I have never seen the ocean, or at least not when I was old enough to remember. It was slightly disappointing because the sun didn't come out until right before we left to go home. It's kind of funny that it was cloudy considering Cádiz has over 300 sunny days a year and we managed to visit on one of the 65 or less cloudy days. I still had a good time though and even went swimming briefly although it was a little chilly. I'm going to be visiting the beach in Portugal two weeks though so hopefully it will be sunny then.

When we returned to Sevilla, my friends and I were very hungry so we decided to stop at a bar near our homes to get some tinto de verano and tapas. Tinto de verano (summer red wine) is red wine with lemon or orange soda mixed in. Their orange soda is a little different from ours and this drink is really refreshing. Tapas (bar snack) are one of my favorite aspects of Spain culture thus far. At bars, food comes in three different portion sizes: tapa, half and full. Tapas are usually 2 to 2.5 euros and its like a snack sized portion of a particular dish. It's really fun though because you can order a few different tapas and share with your friends to try lots of different new foods. Plus, if you're out for a drink with friends it's easy to get small portions of food if you're only slightly hungry.