Two cousins, a fortune from Mexico and a bodega in Sanlúcar.

Bodegas Barbadillo is a sherry and wine house in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a town in the province of Cádiz, in southern Spain. The company dates itself to 1821. Its own history names the founders as Benigno Barbadillo y Ortigüela and his cousin Manuel López Barbadillo, who had made their fortune in Mexico before settling in Sanlúcar. Spanish Wikipedia names the same pair, says both were born in Covarrubias, in the province of Burgos, and says they brought their capital back from Mexico after its independence.

Their first cellar was a bodega called El Toro. The company dates the purchase to 1821; Spanish Wikipedia gives 1824. The company says it shipped its first casks of manzanilla to Philadelphia in 1827, and that a few months later it launched Pastora.

The company says Benigno’s eldest son, Manuel, took over the business in 1837. Spanish Wikipedia describes how the family lines then divided: in 1840 Benigno’s widow married a relative and employee of the firm, Pedro Rodríguez, who founded a bodega under his own name, and in 1863 he and Manuel Barbadillo Díez formed Pedro Rodríguez e Hijo. Spanish Wikipedia says the business once worked fifteen bodegas of different architectural styles, among them La Arboledilla and San Agustín.

The company’s timeline dates the formal establishment of the business now called Bodegas Barbadillo to 1954, under Antonio Barbadillo Ambrossy. Spanish Wikipedia lists its successive names as Antonio Barbadillo Ambrossy, Antonio Barbadillo S.L., Antonio Barbadillo S.A. and, finally, Bodegas Barbadillo S.L.

Solear, and a label series painted one season at a time.

Barbadillo’s best-known sherry is Solear, a manzanilla. Spanish Wikipedia lists among the house’s brands the Solear and Mil Pesetas manzanillas, the Pedro Ximénez La Cilla and the palo cortado Obispo Gascón. In 2016 the company released Versos 1891, an amontillado it says came from a single cask given in 1891 to Manuel Barbadillo Rodríguez; it says 100 bottles were sold.

The best-documented part of Barbadillo’s visual identity is a label series. Since 1999 the bodega has released a seasonal saca, or bottling, of Manzanilla Solear Pasada en Rama at the start of each season, the Spanish wine site Vinetur reported in July 2023. Each saca carries its own label: a hand-painted watercolour in homage to a species of the Coto de Doñana, the protected wildlife area of Andalusia, with subjects ranging from the imperial eagle to the red-legged partridge and the flamingo.

The watercolours have been painted by López Rosas, by Zoilo Millán from 2010 to 2012 and, since 2013, by María Ángeles Arias, a painter from Sanlúcar. Arias told Vinetur that her link with Barbadillo came about by chance, and that as a painter she is proud to give colour and visibility to the wildlife around the town.

On 29 June 2023 the bodega opened a permanent exhibition, “100 sacas de Solear Pasada en Rama,” in its Museo de la Manzanilla in Sanlúcar, Vinetur reported. It is made up of 25 frames, each holding enlarged reproductions of four labels, so that the 25 years of the series can be read season by season. For the four sacas of 2023 the company reissued the labels of 1999, showing a goose, an imperial eagle, a lynx and a flamingo. The wine itself, according to the same report, is aged in the bodega El Potro, in the middle of the town’s network of cellars.

Sherry and vermouth.

The seven brands in this group are sherry and vermouth names: Valdespino, Williams & Humbert, Barbadillo and Emilio Hidalgo on the sherry side, and Dolin, Belsazar and Mancino on the vermouth side. Sherry is a fortified wine from the far south of Spain, made by bodegas in towns such as Jerez de la Frontera and Sanlúcar de Barrameda; vermouth is a wine flavoured with herbs and spices, made here in France, Germany and Italy. Both trades sit at many different points in the drinks business, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to larger groups.

A sherry or vermouth brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its wine is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its sherry or vermouth is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family bodega, a white wine and a wordmark taken from tiles.

Barbadillo describes itself as a family winery. When King Felipe VI visited the bodega on 11 April 2022, at the close of its bicentenary celebrations, he was shown round by the company’s president, Manuel Barbadillo Eyzaguirre, the company reported; the King, who had accepted the honorary presidency of the bicentenary committee in 2021, signed a cask to mark the 200 years. Spanish Wikipedia records that the bodega received the Medal of the Province of Cádiz in 2021. Beyond Sanlúcar, the Spanish news site Qué! reported in March 2022 that the group includes Bodegas y Viñedos Vega Real in the Ribera del Duero and Bodega Pirineos in the Somontano. The company says Pirineos joined the group in 2007, and that Vega Real, created in 1997 with José María Vegas as a shareholder, later came under its sole ownership.

The house is also known for a white table wine. In 1975, the company says, Antonio Pedro “Toto” Barbadillo Romero released Castillo de San Diego, a young white made from Palomino Fino, a grape the company says had until then gone into the long-aged fortified wines of the sherry region. It was named after the street beside the bodega, next to Sanlúcar’s castle; Spanish Wikipedia dates the launch to 1976.

In February 2023 Barbadillo relaunched that wine as Barbadillo Blanco de Albariza, made, the company says, from Palomino Fino grown on the chalky white albariza soil of its vineyards. It says the new label shows Sanlúcar in its upper part, that the green bottle has been kept, and that the word Barbadillo is set in “a unique typography inspired by the old tiles that decorate the bodega’s façade.”

For a design guide, Barbadillo shows how a sherry house can turn a seasonal release into a running illustrated series, and draw a wordmark from its own building. Compare Hidalgo La Gitana, another Sanlúcar manzanilla house, and Tío Pepe, the González Byass fino from Jerez. For this guide we use bottle green, tile blue and albariza white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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