After a brilliant 3 nights in Seville, our next adventure began with us locking ourselves in our building, getting held up in a bakery (which is usually factored into James’ timing estimates), going to the wrong place to get our car, having a first dayer do our hire paperwork, get stuck in traffic in the outskirts of town, and arrive 20 minutes late for our first Sherry bodega tour in Jerez!! Luckily it’s Spain…they were nowhere near ready to get going. In fact they insisted we go and move our car, and remove an signs of life from it. They were not the last in Jerez to frown at us when we said we’d parked our car…didn’t matter where. This pretty much sums up the town of Jerez, but the Sherry was really cheap so everyone’s a winer (sic)!!! We stayed in a hotel, which was nice and had a toilet that was far easier to use, however, the shower was almost impossible. So difficult, that I had to wonder if I’ve ever been taught to shower properly, or was the skill lost when our forefathers migrated to Australia?

We thoroughly enjoyed the bodega tours in Jerez, but struggled to find anywhere decent to eat. How much did Hames hate his hamon in Herez?? Heaps. (All H’s in previous line, were intended to be pronounced “hhhhhkkkkkhhhhhh,,,”, but 3 are actually spelled with a J instead of H…can you guess wjicj ones??)

The drinks still flowed the same, because by the time we actually found a half decent tapas bar, Lea came out with some pearlers. Firstly, upon arrival of some beef dish, “I wasn’t expecting this much meat…”, if I had a Euro for every time… And secondly, upon receiving a quite nice chicken dish…apart from being pink in the middle, Lea explained: “they didn’t ask me how I wanted the chicken cooked…”. Thus opening herself up to a lifetime / marriage time (whichever comes first, odds have probably changed after this) of “how would you like your chicken cooked tonight dear?”

At one Bodega, where our booking had been lost, we ended up with a private tour…followed closely by 200 Germans…and also a tasting of 9 glasses of Sherry and brandy for James and 4 for Lea James.  With Lea the only one having completed her RSA training, this shone through as she stared me down, eyes saying “this is what we’re in this crappy town for for, step up!” and voice saying, “NO WINE LEFT BEHIND!” Lea, did try some of the wines, and ended up liking the Cream Sherry the best…surprise.  Next we’ll be adding rennet, a starter culture and making Sherry Camambert (patent pending!)

We got stuck with Aussies at 2 of the 4 bodegas we visited (do we all sound like that??), who all used the same excuse as us for not buying too much of anything anywhere: “oh…you see we have these, um, strict import regulations in Straylia…”  One of the bodegas was great as there was a shed with all their old horse drawn carts, presumably used for transporting their product around town.  I guess one for the dry and one for the sweet…one dry chariot, one…sweet chariot??