With evocative names such as Soportales (Arcades), Viñas (Vineyards) or La Sacristía (The Vestry), Sánchez Romate’s different ageing rooms comprise a well-designed complex, as if it were a city in itself within the city of Jerez, the origin of the firm’s wines and brandies and the place which gives them their name – vino de Jerez, or Sherry wine.

Jerez de la Frontera lends personality to the wine. The city’s energy stems from centuries of passionate wine tradition. Surrounded by Europe’s southernmost vineyards, the history of Jerez is the history of its wineries, bright white limestone soil and copper stills.

How did this all begin? Over 3000 years ago, the Phoenicians who disembarked in the Bay of Cádiz brought the first vines with them. These vines adapted perfectly to the fertile limestone soil, which is as white as the sunshine which drenches the area. Later civilisations – Romans, Visigoths and Arabs – extended the vineyards under a dry, sunny climate that received the refreshing caress of the sea breeze.

In Sherish – the ancient Muslim name for Jerez – they experimented with the first distillations to make perfumes. Later, these processes were consolidated in Christian Xerez in the 14th and 15th centuries. It was then that the wines of Jerez began to gain international acclaim, as they began to earn fame across Europe. Over time, merchants and wine producers who were attracted by Jerez’s potential flocked to the city from all over, founding wineries that are still trading today. Sánchez Romate is one of the most emblematic of them.

Aside from its renowned wines, Jerez is also the birthplace of flamenco and horse shows, late Gothic convents and churches as well as 18th and 19th century bourgeois architecture. A stroll through the city, along streets lined with lilac and orange trees, stimulates your senses and helps to understand the magic of its most universal gifts, the wines and brandies of Jerez.