Mencia Sherry White Bordeaux United States Oregon Willamette Valley 750ml

Sherry is made in a unique way using the solera system, which blends fractional shares of young wine from oak barrels with older, more mature wines. Sherry has no vintage date because it is blended from a variety of years. Rare, old sherries can contain wine that dates back 25 to 50 years or more, the date the solera was begun. If a bottle has a date on it, it probably refers to the date the company was founded.

Most sherries begin with the Palomino grape, which enjoys a generally mild climate in and around the triad of towns known as the "Sherry Triangle" and grows in white, limestone and clay soils that look like beach sand. The Pedro Ximenez type of sweet sherry comes from the Pedro Ximenez grape.

Sherry is a "fortified" wine, which means that distilled, neutral spirits are used to fortify the sherry. The added liquor means that the final sherry will be 16 to 20 percent alcohol (higher than table wines) and that it will have a longer shelf life than table wines.

France is widely known as being the home of many of the world's finest white wines, and within France, the name which rings out across the wine world and is always associated with excellence of quality and flavor is Bordeaux. The white wines of the magnificent Bordeaux region are typically blended, and rely on the winemaker's skill and expertise to achieve the fine balance between the primary grape varietals used. Most blended white Bordeaux wines are made up of Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon and Muscadelle varietals, although there are actually nine grapes officially allowed by French wine law for the inclusion in Bordeaux white wines. The other six are Sauvignon Gris, Merlot Blanc, Ugni Blanc, Colombard, Ondenc and Mauzac, although the use of these other grapes has been in steady decline over the past century.

Of all the New World wine countries, perhaps the one which has demonstrated the most flair for producing high quality wines - using a combination of traditional and forward-thinking contemporary methods - has been the United States of America. For the past couple of centuries, the United States has set about transforming much of its suitable land into vast vineyards, capable of supporting a wide variety of world-class grape varietals which thrive on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coastlines. Of course, we immediately think of sun-drenched California in regards to American wines, with its enormous vineyards responsible for the New World's finest examples of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot based wines, but many other states have taken to viticulture in a big way, with impressive results. Oregon, Washington State and New York have all developed sophisticated and technologically advanced wine cultures of their own, and the output of U.S wineries is increasing each year as more and more people are converted to their produce.

The beautiful state of Oregon has, over the past few decades, become increasingly well known and respected for its wine industry, with several small but significant wineries within the state receiving world wide attention for the quality of their produce. Whilst the first vineyards within Oregon were planted in the 1840s, the state's wine industry didn't really take off until the 1960s, when several wine producers from California discovered that the cooler regions of the state were ideal for cultivating various fine grape varietals. Today, Oregon has over four hundred and fifty wineries in operation, the vast majority of which are used for the production of wines made from Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir varietal grapes, both of which thrive in the valleys and mountainsides which characterise the landscape of the state.

The beautiful wine region of Willamette Valley is located in Oregon, one of the main wine producing states of the USA. As in much of Oregon, Willamette Valley benefits enormously from the long, hot summers the state enjoys, and the mineral rich soils which typify the wine regions found there. Willamette Valley has built up a powerful reputation over the past few decades as one of the New World's leading producers of high quality, flavorful and characterful Pinot Noir wines, as the grapes of the Pinot Noir vine thrive particularly well in the region's climatic conditions. Willamette Valley is a fascinating wine region, and is a fine representative for the state of Oregon. Innovative techniques and wine making methods are fairly commonplace there, and the overall produce of the region seems to get better each year.