IT MUST BE SHERRY TIME
LUXURY LIVING DINING u
IF IT’ S FERIA TIME
IT MUST BE SHERRY TIME
BY XAVIER PEDDINGTON
It’ s that time of year again. You are walking along the street and suddenly come across groups of people on horses, in typical Andalucian costume, and girls in flouncing polka-dot dresses dancing to hand clapping. Yes, the Spanish feria season is in full swing, having started with the classic Seville Feria in early April, followed by local ferias that keep you awake into the small hours and go on all through the summer ending with the San Pedro Feria in late October
Wherever you live, your feria experience will be inimitable. In some towns and villages the local feria, always celebrating the patron saint, may only last an extended weekend, while at the other extreme can be more than a week long. Most municipalities have their dedicated feria ground, used just once a year for this event, and in others the main square is the focus of all the fun.
How do you explain to someone who has never experienced an Andalucia town or village fair what it consists of? Days- and nights- of drinking, eating, dancing, with everyone from toddlers to octogenarians enjoying themselves as if there were no tomorrow. There is just no equivalent to the almost 24 / 7 celebration where vino fino, rebujito, ham, cheese, all sorts of cooked food, paellas, with of course the distinctive sevillanas and rumbas that are danced until dawn. One thing is certain. If you enter into the spirit of the fair you will enjoy yourself, and possibly even more so if you partake of that typical feria drink, fino sherry.
No-one has to the best of my knowledge explained exactly why drinking sherry is synonymous with the enjoyment of Spanish ferias, but it unquestionably is. Without any exaggeration hundreds of thousands of bottles get drunk in every Andalucian fair, whether it be the city fairs like Córdoba, Granada, Málaga, the already-mentioned Seville, or the annual town celebrations in places like Marbella, Fuengirola, Estepona, El Puerto de Santa María, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Antequera, Torre del Mar, etc, right down to the little village affairs, of Ojén, Coín, Benahavis, Istán...
A curiosity is that all feria sherry is drunk in half bottles. This actually used to be the general custom in Spain, since, as long-dead wine expert André Simon went on record as saying,“ A bottle of fino, once opened, will go off between luncheon and dinner.” At that time sherry was not intentionally stabilised to the same degree as currently, so one just opened the bottle and threw the cork away;( please note, cork, not the metal caps many of them use now).
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