[6th-12th October 2023]

After a chat with our very pleasant and friendly host, we leave our Granada apartment for the train station and the two-stage journey to Jerez de la Frontera.

Pre-booked seats help make the 2.5-hour trip go smoothly.  As we pull into the Santa Justa station in Sevilla, the heat hits us as soon as we alight onto the platform.  It’s 35 degrees in the city at present, and the station feels at least 5 degrees hotter.

An expected 3-hour layover turns into nearly 4, and latterly we have to stand about in the heat waiting for our platform to be announced.  All major intercity train travel in Spain is subject to airport-style security examination, and once again we have to feed our luggage through the X-ray machine before boarding.

Having extolled the virtues of Spanish train travel on many occasions, this is the first (but not the last!) significant delay of our trip, and Santa Justa is not the most pleasant of railway stations – like most places in Sevilla it’s very hot and very crowded.

We arrive quite late at the lovely Andalucian-tiled railway station at Jerez de la Frontera.  First impressions of the first hotel on the trip are good, but they seem to have given us one of the poorer rooms with a smaller balcony.  We negotiate with the front desk to move after breakfast in the morning.  Breakfast is great and our new room is bigger and has a better balcony that overlooks the huge outdoor swimming pool.

After spending time sightseeing in two cities, we now take the opportunity to relax by the pool in Jerez.  The hotel is very well run and well laid out, and is ideal for a relaxing interlude.

After a couple of days, we take a side trip to the second city of the sherry triangle, El Puerto de Santa Maria, which was a firm favourite during Trip Number One back in 2018.

The train journey from Jerez to El Puerto takes 6 minutes.  Our train is 45 minutes late.  During that time, chaos rules.  The station’s electronic communications fail – all of the platform information signs go black.  The station personnel have no clue what is going on.  At one point a train pulls in on the single track that is between our platform and the next one.  Some locals run down through the subway, through security, and onto the platform opposite.  Others try to board the train from our platform, but the doors are locked shut.  Just as we decide to try the subway route, the train pulls away.

Eventually we get on the delayed train and get to El Puerto station from which a taxi whisks us to the modest hotel we’ve booked for one night only.  The main reason for our visit is so that we can spend the evening in one of our favourite tapas bars – Er Beti, which is run by supporters of Real Betis FC in Sevilla.  The bar opens at 8:00pm, which is about the time we reach our hotel, a few minutes walk away.

At 8:10pm we are the first to take an outside table and the place rapidly fills up, with people queueing for a table for much of the evening.  We sit tight for 3 hours or so, enough time for a variety of excellent tapas – including the local speciality tortillitas de camarones (baby prawns from the Bay of Cádiz, fried in thin batter.)  The waiter insists that he knows better than we do what and how much tapas we want, but we go with the flow, and a couple of bottles of a very good Ribera del Duero help ensure a very relaxed evening.

The next morning, in the quaint outdoor part of the hotel breakfast room, that has a good view of its battered boiler, we have the opportunity to repent last night’s enthusiasms at our leisure.

Once we’re back in Jerez, we decide to take in a flamenco tablao, Puro Arte, in a vast former sherry bodega, which probably holds over 100 people at cabaret-style tables.  We wonder if we are to be the total audience but in the end about 30 folk show up.  The crowd includes two Spanish families, one with young children, and unusually four tables are occupied by people on their own, which is nice because it must be a place where people feel comfortable just turning up alone.

In the front row are a bloke and a girl in their 20s, seated at adjoining tables. They get on famously once the ice is broken, and by the time we leave they are outside either swapping numbers or getting a taxi together – ah, young love.

The flamenco is of a high standard, higher than that we saw in Granada, though the performers in the cave at Sacromonte didn’t seem to be trying too hard.  The singer and dancers start off on a tiny board on the floor about a foot from our table, before joining the guitarist on stage.  When the female singer once again descends to the small board later in the show, I get biffed on the nose by her swirling shawl.  Luckily my specs, damaged in Venice during last year’s trip, stay in place.

All in all, an excellent show, accompanied by some fairly pedestrian tapas and wine – again served by a friendly guy who was having no debate about what we were getting.  Just a pity the place wasn’t a bit fuller, but it’s a weekday evening.

We take a taxi into the old town of Jerez, which we haven’t visited until now. 

Fiona asks the taxi driver to drop us at a specific venue in the old town.  He debates which square the place is in.  She shows him it on Google Maps.  He then consults another taxi driver, and eventually drops us in Plaza Plateros, close but not where we wanted to be.  There is a bit of a pattern down here, with people assuming you don’t know what you want and so they give us what they think we should want.  Gets a wee bit annoying after a while.

The Plaza has a lively buzz and we stop at a couple of bars for a drink and a modest amount of tapas.  The only issue is that smoking in the outside parts of bars seems to be allowed/tolerated here – not sure what the law is in Spain now.  A bloke stops by the first bar with a large wooden tray full of warm salted and roasted almonds, which are absolutely delicious.  The bar owners no doubt encourage him to sell his wares, as eating these nuts is bound to increase beer consumption!

Just as we are sitting outside a second bar, discussing whether we should try to happen by a venue in which some small flamenco show is in progress, flamenco comes to us.  It’s in the form of a slender chap who places a wooden board in the middle of the square and proceeds to give a one-man show, aided and abetted by a random punter in the next-door bar who claps out a perfect contra tiempo rhythm as accompaniment.  The dancer doesn’t perform for long but he cleans up a fair load of Euros for his brief performance.

After he’s finished, a young chap at a nearby table starts to serenade his friends with some flamenco guitar and singing.  Turns out that flamenco really is an immersive experience in Jerez!

Our friend who is the sommelier in Sa Punta and Ses Bruixes in Menorca has recommended a sherry bodega for us to visit.  When we go online to book, it becomes apparent that we have seen the Bodegas Tradición featured on an episode of Michael Portillo’s “Great Train Journeys”.  It was memorable because the Bodega’s owner has amassed an incredible collection of paintings spanning Spanish history.

The tour is expensive, at 49 Euros per head, but as well as a guided walk around the vast, humid halls full of aged and aging sherry casks, access is given to the said art collection.  Our guide is a young woman, who comments that one has to be relatively old and male to become one of the Bodega’s star tasters.  All of the manipulations of the sherry in the casks are carried out manually using traditional equipment, including mouth siphoning.  Bodegas Tradición obviously operates at the high end of the market, selling largely very old and very expensive sherries.

When we conclude the sherry tour, we sit in a lovely courtyard, shaded by a huge vine canopy, to taste a range of the Bodega’s sherries, from dry to sweet.  In the dappled sunlight, the guide explains the characteristics of the various sherries clearly and engagingly, though some people aren’t listening going by some of the repetitive questions she has to field.

At one point she mentions that sherries such as fino (the driest, and my favourite) are now being incorporated into modern cocktails.  The conversation then goes something like this:

Me: “Our favourite Spanish restaurant in Edinburgh does a Cádiz Mojito in which fino and cava are substituted for non-alcoholic elements of a traditional mojito.  It’s really good.”

Swedish lady (apparently misunderstanding): “So it’s almost like a virgin cocktail, where the alcohol in the original has been taken out?”

Me: “After two or three Cádiz Mojitos, you are unlikely to be a virgin for long!”

Swedish lady:  Looks flustered and chokes on her oloroso

Oops.

After perusing the collection of art, which includes El Greco, Sorolla, and Velasquez, a taxi is summoned to take us up to the old town for the evening.  Dinner is some great seafood in a restaurant in the Plaza de la Yerba, which offers a superb people-watching location.

It’s noticeable that this part of Jerez is a bit more working class than, say, the district we were in in Granada.  Lots of people have a rougher edge, and beggars and drug users seem to be more in evidence.  The atmosphere is vibrant and it’s good to have got to this part of the city at last.

Our last couple of days in Jerez we chill out again by the pool.  Bird life is ever present, and we see an amazing phalanx of storks gliding completely soundlessly overhead, as well as bright green and much noisier parakeets, plus the odd hoopoe.  It’s going to take a bit of effort for us to drag ourselves away for a day’s travelling to Menorca!

My dozen favourite images from our stay in Jerez de la Fontera are included in the gallery below. Click on a thumbnail to see a bigger image. If you’re using a mobile phone, turn your screen sideways to see the bigger image to best effect.

Image Gallery