In Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale, there is an interesting reference to Lepe’s wine:
Now beware of white and red,
And namely, the white wine from Lepe,
That is to sell in Calle del Pescado or in Chepe.
This wine from Spain subtly trails
In other wines, growing rapidly,
from which rises such fumosita,
that when a man has drunk three drinks,
And when you are at home in Chepe,
It is in Spain, right in the town of Lepe,
Neither in La Rochelle, nor in the city of Bordeaux.
“Smoky” is a beautiful word; its meaning is so clear that no lexicographer would dare to define it. Chaucer (1340-1400) was the son of a vintner and was notoriously accurate in everything he said, so it seems that the wines of southern Spain were already fortified when he wrote his Tales, and this is attested by the knowledge that the Moors distilled alcohol and used it for medicinal purposes. The Elizabethan “sack” was certainly fortified.
Lepe is a town between Ayamonte and Huelva, a few kilometers from the coast, and white wines from that district have long been imported to Jerez for blending with sherry. They are rather light but similar in style. When Ford wrote his Handbook to Spain during the last century, he visited Lepe and found that “much bad wine is made, sent to San Lucar, and converted to fine sherry for the English market…”
In fact, the wine is not all bad, judged purely as an ordinary local. It was probably sent to Jerez and Puerto de Santa María in larger quantities than to Sanlúcar and could only be used for blending with mediocre sherry, but at least he was right in principle. Chaucer was writing about a wine very similar to sherry, if not sherry itself.