Chamomile (wine)

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Cup and bottle of Manzanilla

Cañera de Manzanilla de Sanlúcar de Barrameda

The manzanilla is a generous and dry wine, exclusive to the city of Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz). It is made with palomino grapes and aged under a layer of yeasts called "veil of flower", and which is called "biological aging". This aging is carried out using the criaderas and soleras system.

Manzanilla is a wine made from grapes produced in Marco del Jerez, but aged in the municipality of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. The Marco provides the raw material and the maritime climate, together with the breezes from the Atlantic, make the wine mature in a different way and acquire certain peculiar characteristics, different from those produced with the same method in Jerez or in El Puerto de Santa María., called the Criaderas and Soleras System.

The aging is carried out exclusively in wineries in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a town located in the province of Cádiz, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, in southern Spain, and under the control of the Regulatory Council of the Denomination of Origin Manzanilla-Sanlúcar de Barrameda. This designation of origin was created in 1964 and, together with the Designation of Origin Jerez-Xérès-Sherry, shares geography, production area, grape variety and production process, as well as the protection of the same Regulatory Council.

Features

Manzanilla is a very pale wine, with a characteristic pungent aroma, light on the palate, dry and not very acidic, with a graduation that according to its regulation can range between 15 and 17% alcohol by volume. It is the lightest of all the Marco del Jerez wines, ideal to accompany an aperitif. Its characteristics are the result of the aging process under flor to which it is subjected in conjunction with its upbringing and aging in cellars in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

The traditional varieties of chamomile are manzanilla fina and manzanilla pasada.

Etymology of its name

Bodega in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

Manzanilla is one of the few wines that does not take its name from its place of origin. Since 1781 there are records in the city of Cádiz of the use of this name to designate a wine from Sanlúcar.

Regarding the etymology of this denomination, there are four theories, constituting its origin a true enigma.

One of them is that its name comes from the town of the same name in the province of Huelva, located about 40 km from Seville and about 48 km from Huelva: during the conquest of the New World, the wines of Manzanilla were required to support very well the crossing of the ocean, preserving its aroma and palate. The wines of Manzanilla came in chariots to Seville and Sanlúcar de Barrameda, from where numerous expeditions went to the New World. The wines stored in the Sanluqueñas wineries improved over time, either by the weather, either by the conservation system (criaderas and soleras) until it became the indigenous wine that is today. However, Richard Ford in 1846 stated that "it is neither made nor drinkable in that people." In addition, since medieval times, the wines from the Niebla County are called in Sanlúcar "rocinados".
Others have pointed out that the name comes from the smell or aroma of apple (Sannino, 1925).
It has also been claimed that it comes from a class of vine called Manzanillatoday disappeared (R. Joaquín Domínguez, 1853).
The fourth of the explanations is the great similarity that exists between its fragrance and that of the flower of the aromatic plant called Manzanilla or camomila. According to the description of Esteban Boutelou (1807): "From the apparent white grapes as the list (denomination given in Sanlúcar to the dove grapes), stepped in good disposition, and slightly expressed, white wines are obtained without the slightest vise, which are constantly distinguished by its smell of manzanilla, and by its exquisite fragrance that the gaunts so much appreciate".

Chamomile in literature

Tag of the DO Manzanilla de Sanlúcar de Barrameda

The first written mentions of the wine described under this name can be found in the last decades of the 18th century, in some farces by Juan Ignacio González del Castillo (1763-1800) and in an official document belonging to a council of the City Council of Cádiz dated May 31, 1781. In addition to the aforementioned sainetes, there are many literary works that mention chamomile; generally associating it with the party and revelry.

Prosper Mérimée mentions the Hispanicism «manzanilla» for the first time in a French text in his novel Carmen (1845). In Georges Bizet's opera of the same name, the Sanlúcar broth is mentioned again in the famous string Près des remparts de Séville.

Antonio García Gutiérrez quotes him in Los hijos del tío Tronera (1849), a farce that parodies his famous drama El trovador. The brothers Manuel and Antonio Machado also praise chamomile in several of their poems.

In The Plenitude of Life (1960) Simone de Beauvoir mentions drinking chamomile on Madrid terraces during the Second Spanish Republic.

However, not only big names in literature have used chamomile as a motif for their work. Within popular Andalusian literature there are couplets and proverbs related to Sanlúcar wine, as illustrated by the following examples:

To Rome he goes by snorkels,

for tobacco to Gibraltar,

by chamomile to Sanlúcar,

And Cadiz goes for salt.

From Rota, the tintilla; from Sanlúcar, the chamomile.

De Rota, the tintilla; of Sanlúcar, the chamomile; and of Jerez, the king of wines is.

The Chamomile of Sanlúcar and Los Puertos cheers the living and raises the dead.

There is a tenth which is awarded to Carlos Manuel de Céspedes that mentions Manzanilla wine, although he locates its origin, perhaps by mistake or ignorance, in the region of Castilla.

For Cubans, it is stain and lack of intelligence toast to independence with camomile wine Manzanilla is from Castile Castile land of Spain that subjugates and deceives us with insatiable cruelty, toast to freedom, with cane brandy.”

Sales

It is a wine that is sold almost entirely in the Iberian Peninsula, its presence being marginal abroad

Museum and visits

There is a museum dedicated to this wine at Bodegas Barbadillo.

The Herederos de Argüeso winery also has a visitor center to learn about the production of Manzanilla.

Management

Regulatory Council of the Manzanilla-Sanlúcar de Barrameda Designation of Origin.[1]

In 2015, the Professional Association of Artisan Wineries of Sanlúcar de Barrameda was established by Manzanilla de Sanlúcar wineries, with the aim of promoting, conserving, improving and defending the wine sector of the city of Sanlúcar de Barrameda and its region, from its vineyards, passing through its wineries to its wines, prioritizing Manzanilla over them as the oenological heritage of Sanlúcar and a unique and exceptional wine in the world.

In 2017 the "Mesa de la Manzanilla de Sanlúcar" as dictated by the Regulations for the operation of the Regulatory Council of Jerez and Manzanilla but without its protection.

On June 26, 2018, the Manzanilla-Sanlúcar de Barrameda Foundation was established for the exclusive defense of Sanlúcar wine and will have Las Covachas in Sanlúcar as its headquarters.

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