A vist to Palacios Remondo in Rioja Baja
Claire, Tom and I visit Palacios Remondo in Rioja on the first day of our Spanish trip.
Claire, Tom and I visit Palacios Remondo in Rioja on the first day of our Spanish trip. Palacios Remondo – 18th July 2007
Tom, Claire (both Green & Blue Managers) and I were off to sunny Spain this week to visit our favourite Rioja producer in the world and Vega Sicilia – with out doubt one of the great wineries of the world. Two days of superlatives, then. It has been a very tough few months. We have just opened our second site, in Clapham North and so I have not had a day off for weeks and have not been getting very much sleep. Tom, who moved from Lordship Lane to Clapham is also relatively worn out, so we were not exactly an effusive bunch.
I had to mentally prepare myself to do the driving in Spain – a thought that filled me with horror and dread for weeks before. I hate driving on wine trips at the best of times. Designated drivers can’t drink, I am usually on the wrong side of the road in a big, strange, car and I do feel the responsibility of transporting innocent lives around keenly. Not that I drive like a maniac, but I am certainly not my best behind the wheel of a foreign car. Add to this happy scenario the tiredness etc and it was all a bit of a worry. I invested in a GPS system though. Jude and I frequently bring our marriage to the brink of the abyss with navigation issues on trips abroad and I did not think it fair that Tom and Claire should be treated to similar scenes behind the wheel. It turned out that the GPS system drove me to greater displays of hysteria than Jude has ever been capable of, so we know for next time. Stick to human error – it is actually far less stressful to deal with.
We made it to Stansted and then onto the flight to Zaragoza without too much trouble, although the plane was delayed which meant we did not get to Palacios Remondo till about 3pm, when we had been expected at 2pm. We were meeting Oscar Alegre, export director for the company, a fabulous ambassador for these wines. Oscar has lived in this region all his life and believes in it passionately, as well as in the importance of preserving all the best traditional aspects of the company, combined with modern methods and technology.
We met him in Alfaro in Rioja Baja and, being late, started with a light Spanish lunch. That of course meant 4 courses and towering mountains of food but we were starving and it was all fabulous – ripe tomatoes with fresh garlic and olive oil, onions fried in batter, seriously good ham, ham croquettes, cod fritters and milk fed lamb. We were all utterly anti-social with garlic oozing from every pore afterwards but it was so wonderfully good, it would have seemed ridiculous to care.
Alvaro Palacios, the driving force behind the winery generally needs no introduction to fans of serious Spanish wine. He comes from a wine family (based in Rioja) , but left Spain to see the world, making wine in both France and California before he returned, full of ideas. He then made his mark in Priorat in 1989, being one of the original pioneers involved in the regeneration of the region now widely hailed as one of Spain’s best, and making wines that command incredible prices. After more than proving himself there, he took over the home ranch after the death of his father in 2000 and slowly, surely, year on year, things in Rioja keep getting better. Vineyards are now farmed organically and many biodynamic principles are being followed. Like so many places, vines had been all but destroyed with years of chemical abuse and rehabilitating them is a labourious process but one which the winery is completely committed to. Alvaro has now turned his energy and attention to little known region of Bierzo in the north west, of which more later.
Palacios Remondo Rioja is not traditional in that it is not a blend of grapes from the 3 sub regions of Rioja – Baja, Alavesa and Alta. They use only grapes grown in the southerly sub region of Rioja Baja which produces 30% of the region’s wines but where traditionally, no-one bottled their own. When the Bordeaux producers fleeing the plague of phyollera in the late nineteenth century landed here, they established most of the wineries further north, in Rioja Alta, and Baja have yet to fully shake off the image of being somehow less superior.
Here, Garnacha, more than Tempranillo, reigns supreme and it is from here that Spanish rusticity and spice would be contributed to blends. Tempranillo is more intrinsically suited to the slightly cooler (thanks mainly to higher altitude) climates of the other sub-regions while Garnacha needs at least a month or two of intense heat to ripen. Rioja Baja provides this without any problem in most vintages, the continental climate with intensely hot days and cooler nights suiting it perfectly. The mania for Tempranillo means that many are uprooting supposedly lesser Garnacha in favour of the Spanish variety but Palacios Remondo remain committed to it although they too have extensive plantings of Tempranillo after Alvaro’s father followed the general trend towards this variety in the 1980’s.
After lunch, we got into Oscar’s land rover and bounced our way up the slopes of the Yergia mountain range to look at the vineyards. Standing on a ridge, they fanned out beneath us, the different shades of green clearly demarcating the Garnacha and Temparanillo. They still plant and use Graciano and Mazuela (Carignan), but are slowly but surely phasing the latter out as they feel that the particular clone that they currently have is not really good enough.
Baja lies in the Ebro valley, a place of very rich soils, as famed for its fruit and vegetables as it is for its vines. The best vineyards tend to be planted on stony clay soils with chalk and limestone subsoils and most of the Palacios vineyards are on such sites. These clay soils are essential for retaining the moisture which is often notable by its absence during crucial phases of the growing season and again, makes the Baja region different to the other 2 more northerly. We got back inyo the jeep and drove to look at another vineyard, one which will eventually produce a single vineyard, icon wine of this region. Here, soils were lighter with much more calcium carbonate and the bush vines were trained so that the fruit was mere centimetres off the ground, saving the plant from having to transport food and water too far. Oscar was vague on an exact release date for this as apparently, it is still very much a work in progress.
Back to the winery then for a quick look around before tasting. Eventually, the aim is to work in a purpose built, very modern winery. Garnacha is a finicky grape once off the vine and needs very careful handling or it can get oxidative quite easily. This is still a very traditional winery and in many ways, very difficult to work with - small narrow doors in many of the tanks making both cleaning and pump over difficult. One traditional aspect which they don’t intend to change is the use of concrete tanks for malolactic fermentation and blending. Puri at Vega Sicilia later confirmed exactly the same - in this climate, concrete often works better than modern, gleaming stainless steel. The latter reacts too quickly to falling temperatures and this can result in fermentations stopping all together while concrete contains the heat and keeps things going.
Things are kept as simple as possible in the winery on the whole with temperature control being probably the most modern intervention. The reds are fermented at 26 – 28 ºcelcius over 12 – 15 days while the whites are fermented at a relatively frosty 13º celcius for 2 months.
Finally, to the tasting where almost the whole range, including wines from Bierzo and Priorat were shown.
06 Palacios Remondo Vendimia
55 % Temp, 45% Garnacha
Their baby red, aged in concrete tanks and released young for juicy, easy drinking – and very, very good it is to. They used to age this in barrel for 3 months but decided to dispense with this more expensive treatment and to sell it even more cheaply. A noble and praiseworthy move.
Very vibrant bright red fruit nose. Sweet and juicy red fruit on the palate with good freshness and soft, liquorice tannins. Lovely length and richer liquorice mid palate ending on a bright, fresh red cherry note.
06 Placet Rioja Blanco
100% viura
Beautifully fresh lemon chunk flavours with underlying rich white spice. Still a bit unsettled and slightly disjointed, but has just been bottled and so needs time to integrate - very beautiful none the less.
Many think of Viura as being an essentially characterless variety of no intrinsic value but the secret is really in the yields, Oscar explained. When it was first introduced to the region about 80 years ago, it made some fantastic wines but greed then got the better of producers and most went down the quantity route. If carefully grown though and not over oaked, it makes truly delicious white with fresh lemon blossom aromas balanced by richer, creamy butter flavours.
05 Montessa Rioja Crianza
60% Garnacha, 30% Tempranillo, Graciano
This is a slightly new blend for the Montessa.
Dense and rustic on nose – intense red fruit with an edge of sweet and savoury spice. Balanced acidity and spicy tannins, fine and elegant but still with a rustic, Rioja character. There are sweet spice aromatics and hints of liquorice but the wine is still very young and closed in. Despite this, it is still showing really beautifully - great elegance and intensity with a fresh raspberry/cranberry/coffee/spice finish.
05 Propridad
60% Garnacha from their oldest vines, this fruit is fermented in big oak tanks, with part of it doing Malolactic in small oak barrique. Also has some Tempranillo and Graciano.
Sweet red fruit and aromatic spice nose – young but beautifully intense and alluring. Super silky but structured tannins in a medium body packed with glossy, sweet fruit, liquorice, coffee and buttered vanilla. Elegant, amazingly complex despite the relative youth with a persistently sweet, red fruit compote and single cream finish.
05 Petalos – Bierzo
100% Mencia
Bierzo has been home to vine growing and wine making since at least the 12th century but until very recently, the wines were only ever sold and drunk very locally with most produced by co-operatives. Now that the full beam of Alvaro Palacios’ attention is focused on this relatively small region though, that is certain to change.
Palacios Remondo now own 30 hectares of vineyards in Bierzo, all of which are farmed biodynamically. The Petalos is a blend of grapes from several different villages in Bierzo while the Corullon comes from just one – a village of the same name which has slopes ranging from 300 – 1000meters.
The main grape variety here is Mencia, one which I had heard was related to Cabernet Franc (the herbaceous peppery aromas are certainly similar), but Oscar thought this was unlikely. This is a very age worthy variety and certainly in my experience, it does close down very tightly both in the glass when it is young and after 2 or 3 years in bottles. I have yet to taste an example that has emerged on the other side of the closed period, but I do like these wines and I look forward to it. Oscar believes that these wines will eventually age even better than those from Priorat, which is very exciting.
Spicy red fruit nose – less intensity than the Riojas – hints of green and black pepper. Slightly lighter in body but there are soft, structured tannins and a lovely spicy edge. Oscar uses the word ‘juicyness’ a lot to describe this and that sums it up perfectly – there is something light and easy about this wine despite the velvet, textured tannins.
04 Villa de Corullon, Bierzo
100% Mencia
Don’t like this one too much – it has gone very lean. This wine is all still there – no gaping holes or hollows in the mid-palate, but it has completely shut down for now. Comes back on the finish but at the moment it is only the bones of the structure showing through.
05 Finca Dofi, Priorat
55% Garnacha, 25% Cabernet, Carignan and Syrah
From the now iconic Priorat region with its very dry, Mediterranean weather, the fruit for this comes from 20 year old vineyards. The wines from here do not have the earthy rusticity that is the hallmark of the Palacios wines from Rioja, showing instead perfumed dried herbs, reminiscent of French wines from the south.
Very ripe and glossy black and red fruit on the nose. Structured tannins and fresh acidity with ripe, sweet black and red fruit still very youthful and locked in and overlaid with buttered oak and a sweet liquorice finish. Still amazingly young but the dried herbs and intense fruit are all there, waiting to develop and take over the bony tannins.
After the tasting, it was time to get into the big old car (Hertz had kindly upgraded us to a bigger car which was really the last thing I wanted). We were able to leave the GPS lady in her little box and merely followed Oscar to a soundtrack of Billy Idol’s greatest hits which Tom had picked up at the airport. Surprisingly appropriate for wide, open landscape with distant mountains we were driving through. I have no idea of why that should be so, but it seemed to work.
Oscar dropped us off at our hotel which was, rather bizzarely, over a service station (not hugely scenic) and came back to pick us up half an hour later for an evening of tapas. I do often think that if I was forced to choose just one style of food to eat for the rest of my life (which would be a terrible choice), it would have to be tapas. I love everything about it. The fact that each tiny bar specialises in one thing. The fact that it is about talking and being with others as much as it is about eating and of course the fact that the food tastes as it would in your own kitchen, if you were fortunate enough to have a highly proficient Spanish person in there, knocking up utterly fabulous food from very basic bits and pieces.
We started with beer and tortilla – the egg still very slightly runny and the potatoes perfectly cooked with no flavouring other than kernels of crunchy salt. It was delicious, although Claire was not at all happy with the floor littered with discarded napkins or the fact that she was expected to discard hers in a similar manner. I pointed out that the floor may be a mess, but the bar was gleaming but I don’t think that helped.
We then moved on to the octopus and potato bar. Thick, totally tender chunks of octopus, both tentacles and body served with olive oil, paprika and potatoes. An entire family, including a very small and curious toddler were crammed into the back of the tiny bar, also tucking into this gorgeous dish. Oscar talked about how despite the fact that much of Spain still was very traditional – the phenomenon of whole families regularly doing things together, passing traditions on and building an utterly rooted sense of the society and an individuals place in it, this, like so much else was changing. I did not know whether to feel happy and amazingly privileged that I have had the experiences I have had in Spain both on this and previous trips – just really simple things like sublime tapas in tiny, smoky bars full of families and groups of friends of all ages or utterly depressed at the thought that this, like so much else, is going and when and if it does go completely, it will be a profoundly awful loss.
No time to get too maudlin though as after this, we were off to the garlic mushroom bar – bigger and, said Oscar slightly dismissively, more for tourists. Certainly very lucky tourists – these were garlic mushrooms par excellence – simply fried and served with a fat little prawn on a piece of bread. Things start to get slightly hazy after this time, but I think it was the anchovy bar next. Another tiny glass of beer and the most sensational anchovy and green pepper on bread tapas. So good, that Tom, Claire and I immediately started to discuss how we could adapt this for the Green & Blue menu – watch this space.
It was getting late and we were getting tired and full but we had a final stop – at the salad bar. Although Oscar informed us that the original owner was now semi retired and unfortunately not on duty that night, the very funky, slightly punky couple behind the bar seemed eminently capable to our untrained eyes. And I am still dreaming of the salad – ripe, rich tomatoes, sweet, very slightly peppery chunks of Spanish onion, black olives and tuna drizzled with very good olive oil and served in a big pile with bread on the side. Completely out of this world. Oscar chatted to a friend in Spanish while the 3 of us fell on it as though we had not eaten for days. Claire and I stopped long enough to wonder if the amazingly generous size of the salad had been a calculated ploy by Oscar to finish us off for the evening. It certainly worked. After contributing to the drifts of used napkins littering the floor, we walked back to the car and then back to the hotel.
I am very, very proud to sell the wines of this company, not only because they make stuff that is an absolute pleasure to drink but also because they are so passionate and devoted to making a wine that is so very much of this place – everything about this place, the people and the culture as well as aspects like the soils and altitude. They have great ambitions and are growing (they’re up to 1 million bottles across their ranges now) but I have absolutely no doubt that with the current team in place, this passion and devotion to making beautiful wine isn’t going anywhere.
Tom, Claire (both Green & Blue Managers) and I were off to sunny Spain this week to visit our favourite Rioja producer in the world and Vega Sicilia – with out doubt one of the great wineries of the world. Two days of superlatives, then. It has been a very tough few months. We have just opened our second site, in Clapham North and so I have not had a day off for weeks and have not been getting very much sleep. Tom, who moved from Lordship Lane to Clapham is also relatively worn out, so we were not exactly an effusive bunch.
I had to mentally prepare myself to do the driving in Spain – a thought that filled me with horror and dread for weeks before. I hate driving on wine trips at the best of times. Designated drivers can’t drink, I am usually on the wrong side of the road in a big, strange, car and I do feel the responsibility of transporting innocent lives around keenly. Not that I drive like a maniac, but I am certainly not my best behind the wheel of a foreign car. Add to this happy scenario the tiredness etc and it was all a bit of a worry. I invested in a GPS system though. Jude and I frequently bring our marriage to the brink of the abyss with navigation issues on trips abroad and I did not think it fair that Tom and Claire should be treated to similar scenes behind the wheel. It turned out that the GPS system drove me to greater displays of hysteria than Jude has ever been capable of, so we know for next time. Stick to human error – it is actually far less stressful to deal with.
We made it to Stansted and then onto the flight to Zaragoza without too much trouble, although the plane was delayed which meant we did not get to Palacios Remondo till about 3pm, when we had been expected at 2pm. We were meeting Oscar Alegre, export director for the company, a fabulous ambassador for these wines. Oscar has lived in this region all his life and believes in it passionately, as well as in the importance of preserving all the best traditional aspects of the company, combined with modern methods and technology.
We met him in Alfaro in Rioja Baja and, being late, started with a light Spanish lunch. That of course meant 4 courses and towering mountains of food but we were starving and it was all fabulous – ripe tomatoes with fresh garlic and olive oil, onions fried in batter, seriously good ham, ham croquettes, cod fritters and milk fed lamb. We were all utterly anti-social with garlic oozing from every pore afterwards but it was so wonderfully good, it would have seemed ridiculous to care.
Alvaro Palacios, the driving force behind the winery generally needs no introduction to fans of serious Spanish wine. He comes from a wine family (based in Rioja) , but left Spain to see the world, making wine in both France and California before he returned, full of ideas. He then made his mark in Priorat in 1989, being one of the original pioneers involved in the regeneration of the region now widely hailed as one of Spain’s best, and making wines that command incredible prices. After more than proving himself there, he took over the home ranch after the death of his father in 2000 and slowly, surely, year on year, things in Rioja keep getting better. Vineyards are now farmed organically and many biodynamic principles are being followed. Like so many places, vines had been all but destroyed with years of chemical abuse and rehabilitating them is a labourious process but one which the winery is completely committed to. Alvaro has now turned his energy and attention to little known region of Bierzo in the north west, of which more later.
Palacios Remondo Rioja is not traditional in that it is not a blend of grapes from the 3 sub regions of Rioja – Baja, Alavesa and Alta. They use only grapes grown in the southerly sub region of Rioja Baja which produces 30% of the region’s wines but where traditionally, no-one bottled their own. When the Bordeaux producers fleeing the plague of phyollera in the late nineteenth century landed here, they established most of the wineries further north, in Rioja Alta, and Baja have yet to fully shake off the image of being somehow less superior.
Here, Garnacha, more than Tempranillo, reigns supreme and it is from here that Spanish rusticity and spice would be contributed to blends. Tempranillo is more intrinsically suited to the slightly cooler (thanks mainly to higher altitude) climates of the other sub-regions while Garnacha needs at least a month or two of intense heat to ripen. Rioja Baja provides this without any problem in most vintages, the continental climate with intensely hot days and cooler nights suiting it perfectly. The mania for Tempranillo means that many are uprooting supposedly lesser Garnacha in favour of the Spanish variety but Palacios Remondo remain committed to it although they too have extensive plantings of Tempranillo after Alvaro’s father followed the general trend towards this variety in the 1980’s.
After lunch, we got into Oscar’s land rover and bounced our way up the slopes of the Yergia mountain range to look at the vineyards. Standing on a ridge, they fanned out beneath us, the different shades of green clearly demarcating the Garnacha and Temparanillo. They still plant and use Graciano and Mazuela (Carignan), but are slowly but surely phasing the latter out as they feel that the particular clone that they currently have is not really good enough.
Baja lies in the Ebro valley, a place of very rich soils, as famed for its fruit and vegetables as it is for its vines. The best vineyards tend to be planted on stony clay soils with chalk and limestone subsoils and most of the Palacios vineyards are on such sites. These clay soils are essential for retaining the moisture which is often notable by its absence during crucial phases of the growing season and again, makes the Baja region different to the other 2 more northerly. We got back inyo the jeep and drove to look at another vineyard, one which will eventually produce a single vineyard, icon wine of this region. Here, soils were lighter with much more calcium carbonate and the bush vines were trained so that the fruit was mere centimetres off the ground, saving the plant from having to transport food and water too far. Oscar was vague on an exact release date for this as apparently, it is still very much a work in progress.
Back to the winery then for a quick look around before tasting. Eventually, the aim is to work in a purpose built, very modern winery. Garnacha is a finicky grape once off the vine and needs very careful handling or it can get oxidative quite easily. This is still a very traditional winery and in many ways, very difficult to work with - small narrow doors in many of the tanks making both cleaning and pump over difficult. One traditional aspect which they don’t intend to change is the use of concrete tanks for malolactic fermentation and blending. Puri at Vega Sicilia later confirmed exactly the same - in this climate, concrete often works better than modern, gleaming stainless steel. The latter reacts too quickly to falling temperatures and this can result in fermentations stopping all together while concrete contains the heat and keeps things going.
Things are kept as simple as possible in the winery on the whole with temperature control being probably the most modern intervention. The reds are fermented at 26 – 28 ºcelcius over 12 – 15 days while the whites are fermented at a relatively frosty 13º celcius for 2 months.
Finally, to the tasting where almost the whole range, including wines from Bierzo and Priorat were shown.
06 Palacios Remondo Vendimia
55 % Temp, 45% Garnacha
Their baby red, aged in concrete tanks and released young for juicy, easy drinking – and very, very good it is to. They used to age this in barrel for 3 months but decided to dispense with this more expensive treatment and to sell it even more cheaply. A noble and praiseworthy move.
Very vibrant bright red fruit nose. Sweet and juicy red fruit on the palate with good freshness and soft, liquorice tannins. Lovely length and richer liquorice mid palate ending on a bright, fresh red cherry note.
06 Placet Rioja Blanco
100% viura
Beautifully fresh lemon chunk flavours with underlying rich white spice. Still a bit unsettled and slightly disjointed, but has just been bottled and so needs time to integrate - very beautiful none the less.
Many think of Viura as being an essentially characterless variety of no intrinsic value but the secret is really in the yields, Oscar explained. When it was first introduced to the region about 80 years ago, it made some fantastic wines but greed then got the better of producers and most went down the quantity route. If carefully grown though and not over oaked, it makes truly delicious white with fresh lemon blossom aromas balanced by richer, creamy butter flavours.
05 Montessa Rioja Crianza
60% Garnacha, 30% Tempranillo, Graciano
This is a slightly new blend for the Montessa.
Dense and rustic on nose – intense red fruit with an edge of sweet and savoury spice. Balanced acidity and spicy tannins, fine and elegant but still with a rustic, Rioja character. There are sweet spice aromatics and hints of liquorice but the wine is still very young and closed in. Despite this, it is still showing really beautifully - great elegance and intensity with a fresh raspberry/cranberry/coffee/spice finish.
05 Propridad
60% Garnacha from their oldest vines, this fruit is fermented in big oak tanks, with part of it doing Malolactic in small oak barrique. Also has some Tempranillo and Graciano.
Sweet red fruit and aromatic spice nose – young but beautifully intense and alluring. Super silky but structured tannins in a medium body packed with glossy, sweet fruit, liquorice, coffee and buttered vanilla. Elegant, amazingly complex despite the relative youth with a persistently sweet, red fruit compote and single cream finish.
05 Petalos – Bierzo
100% Mencia
Bierzo has been home to vine growing and wine making since at least the 12th century but until very recently, the wines were only ever sold and drunk very locally with most produced by co-operatives. Now that the full beam of Alvaro Palacios’ attention is focused on this relatively small region though, that is certain to change.
Palacios Remondo now own 30 hectares of vineyards in Bierzo, all of which are farmed biodynamically. The Petalos is a blend of grapes from several different villages in Bierzo while the Corullon comes from just one – a village of the same name which has slopes ranging from 300 – 1000meters.
The main grape variety here is Mencia, one which I had heard was related to Cabernet Franc (the herbaceous peppery aromas are certainly similar), but Oscar thought this was unlikely. This is a very age worthy variety and certainly in my experience, it does close down very tightly both in the glass when it is young and after 2 or 3 years in bottles. I have yet to taste an example that has emerged on the other side of the closed period, but I do like these wines and I look forward to it. Oscar believes that these wines will eventually age even better than those from Priorat, which is very exciting.
Spicy red fruit nose – less intensity than the Riojas – hints of green and black pepper. Slightly lighter in body but there are soft, structured tannins and a lovely spicy edge. Oscar uses the word ‘juicyness’ a lot to describe this and that sums it up perfectly – there is something light and easy about this wine despite the velvet, textured tannins.
04 Villa de Corullon, Bierzo
100% Mencia
Don’t like this one too much – it has gone very lean. This wine is all still there – no gaping holes or hollows in the mid-palate, but it has completely shut down for now. Comes back on the finish but at the moment it is only the bones of the structure showing through.
05 Finca Dofi, Priorat
55% Garnacha, 25% Cabernet, Carignan and Syrah
From the now iconic Priorat region with its very dry, Mediterranean weather, the fruit for this comes from 20 year old vineyards. The wines from here do not have the earthy rusticity that is the hallmark of the Palacios wines from Rioja, showing instead perfumed dried herbs, reminiscent of French wines from the south.
Very ripe and glossy black and red fruit on the nose. Structured tannins and fresh acidity with ripe, sweet black and red fruit still very youthful and locked in and overlaid with buttered oak and a sweet liquorice finish. Still amazingly young but the dried herbs and intense fruit are all there, waiting to develop and take over the bony tannins.
After the tasting, it was time to get into the big old car (Hertz had kindly upgraded us to a bigger car which was really the last thing I wanted). We were able to leave the GPS lady in her little box and merely followed Oscar to a soundtrack of Billy Idol’s greatest hits which Tom had picked up at the airport. Surprisingly appropriate for wide, open landscape with distant mountains we were driving through. I have no idea of why that should be so, but it seemed to work.
Oscar dropped us off at our hotel which was, rather bizzarely, over a service station (not hugely scenic) and came back to pick us up half an hour later for an evening of tapas. I do often think that if I was forced to choose just one style of food to eat for the rest of my life (which would be a terrible choice), it would have to be tapas. I love everything about it. The fact that each tiny bar specialises in one thing. The fact that it is about talking and being with others as much as it is about eating and of course the fact that the food tastes as it would in your own kitchen, if you were fortunate enough to have a highly proficient Spanish person in there, knocking up utterly fabulous food from very basic bits and pieces.
We started with beer and tortilla – the egg still very slightly runny and the potatoes perfectly cooked with no flavouring other than kernels of crunchy salt. It was delicious, although Claire was not at all happy with the floor littered with discarded napkins or the fact that she was expected to discard hers in a similar manner. I pointed out that the floor may be a mess, but the bar was gleaming but I don’t think that helped.
We then moved on to the octopus and potato bar. Thick, totally tender chunks of octopus, both tentacles and body served with olive oil, paprika and potatoes. An entire family, including a very small and curious toddler were crammed into the back of the tiny bar, also tucking into this gorgeous dish. Oscar talked about how despite the fact that much of Spain still was very traditional – the phenomenon of whole families regularly doing things together, passing traditions on and building an utterly rooted sense of the society and an individuals place in it, this, like so much else was changing. I did not know whether to feel happy and amazingly privileged that I have had the experiences I have had in Spain both on this and previous trips – just really simple things like sublime tapas in tiny, smoky bars full of families and groups of friends of all ages or utterly depressed at the thought that this, like so much else, is going and when and if it does go completely, it will be a profoundly awful loss.
No time to get too maudlin though as after this, we were off to the garlic mushroom bar – bigger and, said Oscar slightly dismissively, more for tourists. Certainly very lucky tourists – these were garlic mushrooms par excellence – simply fried and served with a fat little prawn on a piece of bread. Things start to get slightly hazy after this time, but I think it was the anchovy bar next. Another tiny glass of beer and the most sensational anchovy and green pepper on bread tapas. So good, that Tom, Claire and I immediately started to discuss how we could adapt this for the Green & Blue menu – watch this space.
It was getting late and we were getting tired and full but we had a final stop – at the salad bar. Although Oscar informed us that the original owner was now semi retired and unfortunately not on duty that night, the very funky, slightly punky couple behind the bar seemed eminently capable to our untrained eyes. And I am still dreaming of the salad – ripe, rich tomatoes, sweet, very slightly peppery chunks of Spanish onion, black olives and tuna drizzled with very good olive oil and served in a big pile with bread on the side. Completely out of this world. Oscar chatted to a friend in Spanish while the 3 of us fell on it as though we had not eaten for days. Claire and I stopped long enough to wonder if the amazingly generous size of the salad had been a calculated ploy by Oscar to finish us off for the evening. It certainly worked. After contributing to the drifts of used napkins littering the floor, we walked back to the car and then back to the hotel.
I am very, very proud to sell the wines of this company, not only because they make stuff that is an absolute pleasure to drink but also because they are so passionate and devoted to making a wine that is so very much of this place – everything about this place, the people and the culture as well as aspects like the soils and altitude. They have great ambitions and are growing (they’re up to 1 million bottles across their ranges now) but I have absolutely no doubt that with the current team in place, this passion and devotion to making beautiful wine isn’t going anywhere.
