Sherry, a wine which requires more explanation than many of its consumers imagine, is grown in a limited nook of the Peninsula, on the south-western corner of sunny Andalucia, which occupies a range of country of which the town of Xerez is the capital and centre. The wine-producing districts extend over a space which is included--consult a map--within a boundary drawn from the towns of Puerto de Sª. Maria, Rota, San Lucar, Tribujena, Lebrija, Arcos, and to the Puerto again. The finest vintages lie in the immediate vicinity of Xerez, which has given therefore its name to the general produce. The wine, however, becomes inferior in proportion as the vineyards get more distant from this central point.
Although some authors--who, to show their learning, hunt for Greek etymologies in every word--have derived sherry from Ξηρος, dry, to have done so from the Persian Schiraz would scarcely have been more far-fetched. _Sherris sack_, the term used by Falstaff, no mean authority in this matter, is the precise _seco de Xerez_, the term by which the wine is known to this day in its own country; the epithet _seco_, or dry--the _seck_ of old English authors, and the _sec_ of French ones--being used in contradistinction to the _sweet_ malvoisies and muscadels, which are also made of the same grape. The wine, it is said, was first introduced into England about the time of Henry VII., whose close alliance with Ferdinand and Isabella was cemented by the marriage of his son with their daughter. It became still more popular among us under Elizabeth, when those who sailed under Essex sacked Cadiz in 1596, and brought home the fashion of good “sherris sack, from whence,” as Sir John says, “comes valour.” The visit to Spain of Charles I. contributed to keeping up among his countrymen this taste for the drinks of the Peninsula, which extended into the provinces, as we find Howell writing from York, in 1645, for “a barrell or two of oysters, which shall be well eaten,” as he assures his friend, “with a cup of the best sherry, to which this town is altogether addicted.” During the wars of the succession, and those fatal quarrels with England occasioned by the French alliance and family compact of Charles III., our consumption of sherries was much diminished, and the culture of the vine and the wine-making was neglected and deteriorated. It was restored at the end of last century by the family of Gordon, whose houses at Xerez and the Puerto most deservedly rank among the first in the country. The improved quality of the wines was their own recommendation; but as fashion influences everything, their vogue was finally established by Lord Holland, who, on his return from Spain, introduced superlative sherry at his undeniable table.