A lifetime in Sherry - interview with Julian Jeffs

Meet the world's most renowned Sherry writer, Julian Jeffs, with http://www.aroundtheworldin80harvests... in this relaxed video interview where Amanda Barnes asks him about what makes Sherry and Jerez unique, how production has changed, some of his favourite styles and if he thinks Sherry is a hipsters drink. Part of a series of wine expert interviews for http://www.aroundtheworldin80harvests... Please support 80 Harvests by subscribing to our channel and visiting the website. Transcript for the hearing impaired: So, your first trip to Jerez was in 1956. How have you seen the region change in terms of vineyards, viticulture or the technology in wineries? When I was first there, you could stand on that excellent platform outside the Alcazar and look over the vineyards. You can't anymore because Gonzalez Byass has built a big building in the way but in those days the vineyards consisted entirely of bush vines. Those were excellent, but required a great deal of labour to look after them and Gonzalez Byass was one of the pioneers of starting to grow vines on wires as they do in almost all the vineyards in Europe. They produced equally good grapes, they had to learn how to do it and there was a certain amount of experimentation that must have gone on but the two largest growers were Gonzalez Byass and Domecq and they all took to growing their vines on wires, and did it very very well. It's all beautifully controlled now you can fly a helicopter over and see if any bit of the vineyard is in trouble, and go and put it right. It's much more scientific agriculture - or viticulture but viticulture is a branch of agriculture - than it ever was in my day. And winemaking is much more scientific so the average quality of the wines has risen enormously and having started a market for good mature wine it's held. One of the things it hasn't held is the advertising. In ancient days, and I can go 50 years back without batting an eyelid, there was quite a lot of money spent on advertising by the larger shippers and I think that helped to sell the wine. Now there's practically none. A lot of it is sold through the supermarkets who are very quality conscious who sell excellent wines. I don't know if advertising were to be reintroduced if it would pay or not! Possibly not, I dare say the shippers know what they are doing, but one misses the little advertisements used to appear. What do you think: Sherry, some people call it a 'hipsters drink' nowadays. Do you think Sherry is cool again, do you think we will see another peak in the future of its popularity? Oh yes, because it is good. Lots of things that go out of fashion are taken over by more modern movements. There was a time when Mendelssohn was wildly out of fashion in music, but he wrote great music and that is now realised. You have to pay quite a lot of money now if you want to buy an oil painting by Landseer when I was young everyone sneered at Landseer and so on. Fashions change and I deplore fashion. If you went to the basic quality of whatever it is and stuck to that, life would be much better. One of the fashions that came and went for example was nouvelle cuisine... an extremely expensive way of not getting enough to eat. And that I think has gone now. What about the fashions within Sherry. In your time there are a lot of innovations that have happened, some of which stick and some don't. Do you think there are any fashions within the wine production that really will stick or do you think they are all just fads? I think they are treating it so knowledgeably and so scientifically now they have got there. And the way they are making sherry at the moment, is likely to stick. Unless someone finds an even better way of doing something. And the human being is always looking for better ways of doing something. I would be a much richer man than I am if I could foresee the next few! And you would be a smart man to keep it to yourself! Why is Jerez the home of sherry. Apart from the explicit rules about the DO, why can't anyone else make sherry to that quality or character? ...