🍷 Lustau

Lustau (Emilio Lustau S.A.) is a sherry bodega in Jerez de la Frontera. According to the house, its origins date back to 1896, when José Ruiz-Berdejo, a court secretary, grew vines and sold his wines to larger sherry firms as an almacenista (stockholder); Wikidata gives the same year. In 1931 his daughter María bought a small bodega in Jerez, and her husband Emilio Lustau Ortega expanded it; in 1945 the firm began selling its own brands.

According to the house, its first Almacenista bottlings appeared in 1981, and its ranges include VORS sherries and a Vintage Series aged since 1989. In 1990 Lustau merged with Luis Caballero, a Spanish family-owned wine and spirits company. The house says it is the only winery producing wines in all three towns of the sherry triangle.

According to the house, José Ruiz-Berdejo's family estate was called Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza, and in the 1940s Emilio Lustau Ortega moved the bodega to the old Santiago district of Jerez, within the historic Moorish walls. The firm began exporting its own sherries in 1950, and in 2000 it bought six nineteenth-century bodega buildings in central Jerez, restored them and made them its main ageing cellars; their high vaulted ceilings and albero sand floors help keep temperature and humidity stable.

The house names two vineyards: Montegilillo, on white albariza soils, and Las Cruces, the only sherry vineyard where all three permitted varieties, Palomino, Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel, are planted. Its ranges include Solera Familiar, Almacenistas, Rare and Vintage, and VORS, and its Manzanilla Papirusa is 100% Palomino aged under flor in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

Sherry (Jerez-Xérès-Sherry) is a protected designation of origin (PDO) in the province of Cádiz. It is made mostly from Palomino and aged in oak casks of up to 1,000 litres, dynamically in criaderas y solera or statically by vintage; the strength is 14–22% vol., and it may be bottled only in its zone of origin.

Why it matters to you. VOS and VORS are certified age categories, while “Almacenista” on a Lustau label is the house's own range name. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.