Who Will Have a Sherry?

Not since 1578, when Sir Francis Drake sacked Cadiz and sailed away with 3,000 casks of the rich, golden drink, have Spanish vintners been so outraged by British treatment of their proudest export -- sherry. In London's Royal Courts of Justice, Spanish and British wine merchants are arguing a question that, depending on who loses, could sour a big business. The question:

Who can call a sherry a sherry?

The plaintiffs, four British sherry producers, are demanding that they not be enjoined from using the word "sherry" on their labels The defendants, Pedro Domecq, Gonzalez Byass (Tio Pepe) and two other Spanish sherrymakers, argue that true sherry comes only from the vineyards around the Spanish town of Jerez. Since "sherry" is merely a corruption of "Jerez," they say, it ought to be reserved for the Jerez product, just as British courts have reserved the name "champagne" for France's Champagne district.

The Spaniards are sizzling over the fact that the cheaper non-Spanish sherries ($1.30 to $2.50 a bottle, compared with $2 to $4) have taken over half of the large and lucrative British market, which the Jerez product once had all to itself. The low-price sip, sniff the Spaniards, is far inferior. Some of it comes from vineyards in South Africa, Australia and Cyprus. Some is made in Britain from imported grape juice, which is processed and sold under such labels as "British Sherry" and "South African Sherry."

The British claim that the name is no one's private property and that the non-Spanish brands are clearly so identified. Not always, objected the Spaniards, who hauled out a cartoon ad for "British Sherry" in which a matador shouts "Magnifico!" "Why a matador rather than a Devonshire lassie?" one judge asked. "The character in this cartoon," explained a man from Whiteways Cyder, one of the plaintiffs, "was misguided."

All in all, enough lawyers, linguists and wine merchants are on hand to keep the case going well into March, bring court costs alone to around $280,000. Before long, the judges may well be ready to settle the when-is-sherry-sherry question on the expert and well-aged testimony of Falstaff, who defined "a good Sherris-sack" as a brew that "ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive."

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