Casa Morales: Sherry From the Jar
Why is it significant?
Step inside and let your eyes adjust to the dim light. Along the walls stand enormous clay jars, taller than a person, chalk marks on their sides, and in front of them a narrow bar where people lean with a glass of something pale gold.
Key Facts
| Place | Casa Morales: Sherry From the Jar |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle García de Vinuesa 11, 41001 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.38650, -5.99460 |
| Part of Walk | Seville Tapas and Convent Sweets: Hidden Nuns, Old Markets and the Oldest Bar in Town |
| Generated | Generated |
Step inside and let your eyes adjust to the dim light. Along the walls stand enormous clay jars, taller than a person, chalk marks on their sides, and in front of them a narrow bar where people lean with a glass of something pale gold.
Casa Morales opened in 1850 as a wine shop, in the district of the Arenal, near the river where Seville's fleets once loaded and unloaded. Those great jars, tinajas, held the wine, and customers came in to have their own jug filled. Over time, people began to drink a glass on the spot, with a bite to eat, and the shop became a bar without ever quite stopping being a shop. Many of Seville's oldest bars were born exactly this way.
Now, the glass. Ask for a fino or a manzanilla, and you are drinking the wine of the Marco de Jerez, the triangle of Jerez de la Frontera, El Puerto de Santa María and Sanlúcar de Barrameda, south of Seville. Fino and manzanilla are aged under a living blanket of yeast called flor, which protects them from the air and gives them that dry, salty, almost bready taste. Manzanilla can only be aged in Sanlúcar, by the sea, and locals swear you can taste the salt breeze.
The wine also ages in a solera: rows of barrels stacked in tiers, where a little wine is drawn from the oldest row and topped up from the next, and so on up the stack. Nothing is ever completely emptied, so in theory a drop of very old wine lives on in every glass. English merchants loved this wine for centuries, and the word sherry is simply their way of saying Jerez.
Sherry is also the great partner of the tapa. A cold fino with salty almonds, olives or a slice of cured ham is one of the simplest pleasures in Andalusia. When your glass is empty, walk west along Calle García de Vinuesa and its continuation towards the bullring, then turn right to the market hall of the Arenal.