El Maestro Sierra

José Antonio Sierra was a master cooper running a cask workshop, La Merced, when he decided to age his own sherry, an unusual step at a time when the bodegas were in the hands of a few families. He managed it, and the house dates its founding to 1830. The labels recall that struggle: a hare chased by high-society riders.

Sierra had no children. The bodega passed to his wife's niece and from her to her son, Antonio Borrego. When he died in 1976 it went to his widow, Pilar Plá Pechovierto, who ran it in a man's world; today it is run by her daughter Carmen Borrego Plá. It is one of the few Jerez bodegas led by women.

For over a century it was an almacenista: it aged wine and sold it to the big houses, such as González Byass, Domecq or Lustau. In 1992 mother and daughter began bottling under their own label. It owns no vines: it buys young wines, mostly from the Balbaína pago, and ages them in hundreds of old casks.

Oloroso 15 Años is Palomino Fino from Balbaína albariza, fortified straight to 18 degrees without flor, with fifteen years of oxidative ageing in American oak casks. It is bottled en rama and bone dry.