Today I took some clients to Jerez on a tour and at the first winery that we visited they were adding young fortified wine to the last criadera of the solera system for their fino, the lightest style of sherry produced in Jerez. This can be seen in the photo below; the top level of barrels in the photo is oloroso, another style of sherry. For those people who are not familiar with the solera system, it is a fractional blending system that produces a sherry that is a blend of wine from different years. The oldest sherry is always in the solera butts or casks and when any is bottled only a fraction of the full contents are used. The quantity taken out is then replenished with sherry from the next level above known in Spanish as the “primera criadera”. This is then replaced with wine from the “segunda criadera”. If there are more “criaderas” this process continues to the last one which is replenished with fortified wine from last year’s harvest. This young fortified wine is known as “sobretablas” in Spanish.
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