Tour Audio a Jerez de la Frontera

The English word 'sherry' is simply what happens when a British tongue tries to say Jerez, and the city has been producing the fortified wine from Palomino grapes grown in the albariza chalk soils since Phoenician traders first planted vines here. The bodegas of the Sherry Triangle -- Jerez, El Puerto de Santa Maria, and Sanlucar de Barrameda -- are the only places on earth where true sherry can be made, and in Jerez the process is everywhere: vast cathedrals of aging barrels stacked in solera systems in the bodegas of Gonzalez Byass, Domecq, and Williams and Humbert. A morning walk through Gonzalez Byass, whose oldest building dates to 1835, is one of the most atmospheric experiences in Andalusia.

Jerez also claims the Carthusian horse, the ancestor of the Lipizzaner, bred at the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art since 1973.

Performances at the Real Escuela on Avenida Duque de Abrantes are among the most precise and beautiful in European equestrian tradition. The old city's Arab quarter around the Alcazar retains its narrow lanes and its 11th-century mosque, while the annual Feria del Caballo in May transforms Jerez into the most intoxicating horse fair in Spain.