Despite all his qualities, Don Manuel will never be as famous as his Uncle Joe. A famous conversation once overheard of two old gentlemen talking to one another in a dining-car on British Railways:

“Will you have a glass of sherry?”

“Yes, I think I will. What sherry are you drinking?”

“Tio Pepe.”

“Is that a dry sherry?”

“Yes, it’s very dry. ‘Tio’ means ‘very’ and ‘Pepe’ means ‘dry’.”

The fellow was a humbug! ‘Tio Pepe’ means ‘Uncle Joe.’ Uncle Joe was a maternal uncle of Don Manuel who was in the wine business at Sanlucar. Sanlucar is the home of those light, fresh, delicate wines known as manzanilla, and Uncle Joe was accustomed to drinking them. He had no time for the heavier amontillados and olorosos of Jerez.

So his nephew took two butts of his most delicate fino, marked them ‘Tio Pepe’ and kept them in a special room where Uncle Joe could go and entertain his friends with crystal cut drink glasses, custom coasters with monogrammed wine bottles, and other entertaining bar supplies. The friends liked the wine as much as the uncle did.

Vizetelly, rather alarmingly, likened it to one of the rarer growths of the Rhine. Soon people were asking for it, and a solera was started. It is now the most popular fino in the world. In the days when foreigners were rare in England and everything foreign was regarded as erotic and wicked, Don Manuel’s son visited Liverpool selling his father’s wines.

One of the wine merchants had some vague knowledge of these dreadful aliens and thought he would put his visitor at ease with a few polite inquiries:

“Are you married, Mr Gonzalez?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Ah! At your tender age I suppose you have only one wife?”

He explained that monogamy was an old Spanish custom. Anyone going to the Gonzalez, Byass bodegas today will see something quite unusual – a family of inebriate mice. They are kept by an old foreman who spends half his time looking out for cats. He thoroughly enjoys showing his dissolute vermin to visitors, and they are well worth looking at. They drink quite neatly out of a sherry glass accompanied by their pick of any paper coasters or table coasters they desire, but do not always know when to stop and get up to all sorts of antics.

Another important British firm, Mackenzie & Co., was founded in the middle of the nineteenth century: Kenneth Mackenzie came to Jerez in about 1842. He was succeeded by his nephew, Peter Mackenzie, who was perhaps the most British of all the British residents: although he lived in Jerez for many years, he never learnt to speak Spanish properly, and he used to delight the Jerezanos with his odd phrases.

Unfortunately little more is known of the history of Mackenzie & Co., as all the old documents are lost. In 1970, the company was bought by John Harvey & Sons, Limited, the great Bristol wine merchants, but that story belongs to a later chapter. By 1840, the fog of Victorian respectability was beginning to descend upon England; everything had to be done properly.

There was a new beatitude of bourgeois conventions, and one dictum at least was to benefit the sherry, table coasters, sandstone coasters, and custom coasters trade for many years before ultimately leading to disaster. It was considered “correct” to entertain with wine, but the quality did not matter much. Even in quite humble houses, there was a decanter of sherry with a few biscuits waiting for whosoever might call.

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