16th–19th century · Andalusia and England
The sherry trade
Long-standing English demand shaped sherry into the fortified, solera-aged wine it became.
What happened
Sherry — "sack" in early modern English — was a staple of the English market for centuries, and appears repeatedly in Shakespeare.
Fortification developed partly to stabilise wine for shipping, and the solera system emerged as a way of maintaining consistency for a demanding export trade.
The trade was substantially built by English and Irish merchant families settled in Jerez, whose names still appear on bodegas.
Sherry's twentieth-century collapse in reputation and its slow recovery among sommeliers is one of the more dramatic reversals in wine.
How firmly this is dated
Documented. Recorded contemporaneously. The date is not in question.
English trade records and bodega archives; the trade is attested from the sixteenth century onwards.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Consejo Regulador de las Denominaciones de Origen Jerez-Xérès-Sherry — Consejo Regulador del Jerez
Along the timeline
Before · 1550s–2000s
Chilean wine from conquest to export
Spanish mission vines, then a nineteenth-century French graft, then an export industry built in thirty years.
After · 17th century
Cork and the glass bottle
Strong glass and cork together made it possible to age wine — which changed what wine could be.