Sherry

Jerez de la Frontera is a town in Andalusia about fourteen kilometres inland from the sea. It is on the old main road from Cadiz to Seville and used to be cursed by travellers as it was a major obstacle. Few of them stopped there, which was a blessing. They drove through busy streets with clean modern shops and saw none of the Moorish remains of romantic ruins that people like to think are typically Spanish. There was nothing to make them suspect that wine was grown there except a surfeit of sherry and brandy advertisements. They could see no vineyards from the main road - only the salt flats near the sea and the fields of wheat and pasture further inland, vivid green after the spring rains and slowly baking to a golden ochre in the heat of summer. The lack of vineyards surprised them and some asked suspiciously where sherry was grown.