Bodegas Harveys

In 1796, William Perry starts shipping sherry, Madeira, Port and other wines to Bristol. In that era, thick, sweetened Oloroso was already popular in the UK – it was known as milk sherry or Bristol Milk. In his company, Perry was later joined by John Harvey who eventually took over the business with his brothers. Around 1860, they had the idea of creating an even richer version of Bristol Milk, which included older Oloroso, and the name Bristol Cream seemed appropriate. This blended sherry became popular throughout the whole sweet sherry era. Since the early 1950’s, and until this very day Bristol Cream is the number one selling sherry in many markets. In the US, every other bottle of sherry sold is a characteristic Bristol blue bottle. It has been sold on such a massive scale that later the entire category of sweet / blended sherries was called Cream (and not the other way round as you may think).