A friend who is living in Madrid had heard of La Venecia so one night we decided to venture into the central Madrid streets to sample their sherry.
There is something about the atmosphere (not just the stale cigarette smoke) that makes 
you feel like you are stepping back one hundred years into a bona-fide local sherry bar. Old posters advertising sherry festivals around the world throughout the 1900′s. Behind half the bar are rows and rows of dusty sherry bottles. To the right of these are several large wooden casks with small taps that are used to fill the bottles that are ordered. The bar lady is young but has the air of a 60-year-old sour who has been in the trade too long with a sour expression and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She wouldn’t have looked amiss in a 
saloon in the wild west. But there again neither would the black cat jumping over the barrels and onto the bar.
You choose the sherry from a menu, deciding on a glass, half bottle or full bottle. prices start from under 2euros and we took a mid priced sherry at 12euros for the bottle. An empty bottle, that would be used in Paris as a carafe d’eau is then pulled from the shelf and filled from the appropriate cask. I love this place for the atmosphere as well as the sherry and will certainly be going back.
La Venecia: Calle de Echegaray 7, 28014 Madrid. +34 91 429 73 13
