Grape variety
Palomino
Palomino, the grape behind sherry: neutral and low in acid, grown on albariza at Jerez and made into fino, manzanilla and oloroso. Origin and styles.
- Colour
- White
- Origin
- Andalusia; parents unknown; the name is said to come from a knight of Alfonso X
- Main regions
- Marco de Jerez (at least 90 per cent of the vines); smaller: Rueda, Canary Islands, Douro, South Africa, California, Australia
- Typical aromas
- Neutral; under flor green apple, nuts, bread dough; oxidative ageing gives nuts and caramel
- Classic pairing
- Fino and manzanilla with olives, almonds, ham, seafood
- Synonyms
- Palomino Fino; Listán Blanco (Canary Islands); Fransdruif, White French (South Africa); Malvasia Rei (Douro)
Palomino is the grape behind sherry. The Marco de Jerez in southern Andalusia has about 7,000 hectares of vines, and at least 90 per cent of them are Palomino, more precisely Palomino Fino. Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel supply the sweet wines; almost all dry sherries, from pale fino to dark oloroso, come from this one variety. It also goes by other names: Listán Blanco in the Canary Islands, Fransdruif or White French in South Africa, Malvasia Rei in Portugal’s Douro.
Palomino is regarded as an old Andalusian variety, and nothing is known about its parents. The name is said to go back to Fernán Yáñez Palomino, a knight of King Alfonso X in the 13th century; the story is not documented. The grape itself is unremarkable: thin-skinned and productive, low in acidity, with almost no aromas of its own, and a must that oxidises quickly. As a table wine it would be ordinary. That is precisely what suits it to sherry: it carries soil and ageing without getting in their way with aromas of its own. In the Marco de Jerez the must of the dry wine may also be acidified with calcium sulphate.
The grape’s home is albariza, an almost white, chalky marl with up to about 40 per cent calcium carbonate. It stores winter rain for the dry months and lets roots go deep. The harvest here usually begins in late August or early September, under about 3,000 hours of sunshine a year and the cooling Atlantic wind, the poniente. The best sites are called pagos, such as Macharnudo, Balbaína or Carrascal. In recent years individual producers have also bottled unfortified Palomino from such pagos as a still white wine.
The styles of sherry arise from the same dry base wine through fortification and ageing. At around 15 per cent by volume a layer of yeast, the flor, forms in the cask and protects the wine from oxygen; this is how fino and manzanilla come about, with aromas of green apple, nuts and bread dough. An amontillado ages first under flor and then oxidatively. An oloroso, at 17 per cent by volume or more, ages exclusively oxidatively and smells of nuts, fine wood and caramel. Ageing takes place in the solera, a system of tiered rows of casks in which part of the wine is drawn off and replaced from the younger row. The system is documented from the 18th century.
Outside Jerez Palomino has lost importance. In Rueda it was long the most planted grape, before Verdejo displaced it; new plantings are no longer permitted there. In South Africa, where it was grown for brandy and Cape “sherry”, its area has shrunk sharply. Fino and manzanilla are served well chilled, at 6 to 8 degrees, with olives, almonds, cured ham, seafood and fried fish; amontillado and oloroso go with mushrooms, game or mature hard cheese.