Poli Due Barili

Descrizione

When I visited for the first time the Bodegas Williams & Humbert at Jerez de la Frontera, I was literally speechless. Seeing the facility from the outside, I could never have imagined what I saw as soon as I entered: a real cathedral dedicated to Sherry. Thousands and thousands of Botas, the typical 500-liter casks, perfectly aligned and stacked in a huge and majestic space. After ascending a spiral staircase, you can admire the 1.9 million square feet of cellar space (equivalent to 25 soccer fields!), filled up to the ceiling, and you can perceive the intense and enveloping aroma of the resting Sherry.
After tasting various Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso, and attempting in vain to hit the centre of a copita with some kind of small ladle named venencia, I chose a Sherry from the grapes of Pedro Ximenez, ver y thick and sweet, with a robust structure and complex dried fruit aromas. I think nobody will notice if some botas are missing, as there are about 40,000 of them in there! Now they are in the cellar of my own distiller y in Schiavon, to enrich with unique aromatic notes this memorable Grappa. (Jacopo Poli)