Paying the premium

When I went to the hole in the wall to get some cash there was a turrón stall in my way. Turrón is a sweet confectionery, associated with the Spanish Christmas, made with almonds, oil, and sugar. In the average supermarket a 250g bar of turrón will cost about 2.50€, most supermarkets carry something slightly better at, maybe 10€ a bar, but most steer away from the handcrafted product because it is breathtakingly expensive. There are all sorts of varieties of turrón, but the traditional ones are the hard and brittle Alicante variety and the soft, oozing oil Jijona style. The varieties of turrón, with chocolate or fruit are really for people who don't like turrón; they aren't much to do with turrón and are trading on the name.

The chances are that if you have some turrón this Christmas, it will be ordinary production line stuff. You might like it; you might not; but it's unlikely to send you into paroxysms of delight. The same is probably true of the majority of foodstuffs that Spaniards tend to rave about and which they buy in truckloads at this time of year. 

For instance angulas, or baby eels, are another Christmas delicacy. I had a quick Google and you can get fresh ones at 118€ per 100g. If that's a little steep the alternative is something called gulas which are made from ground fish reconstituted to look like elvers. A packet of gulas costs a bit less than 3€. This is lumpfish roe as against caviar territory. 

Miguel Angel Revilla, four times president of Cantabria, and well known character, used to always present quality, expensive, anchovies from Cantabria on his official visits. The anchovies I buy for my sandwiches come in triple packs for less than 3€.

It's similar with prawns—what we Britons call prawns. I don't think I'll ever understand the differences in quality when buying the right and wrong type of prawns. Whether gambas blancas, gambas rojas, gambones, carabineros or langostinos are the best and whether the ones from Denia are better than those from Huelva or Garrucha. Not knowing can cost you dear. Six of the better variety in an ordinary restaurant cost me 48€. It still smarts and that was six or seven years ago now.

Faced with such price variations the majority of us tend to plump for something with an everyday cost or, maybe, we push out the boat and buy the next step up. Then, when we taste it, we wonder what all the fuss was about. The problem is that we've bought run-of-the-mill. Spaniards wax lyrical about their air-cured ham. It can be spectacular but you have to be willing to pay for the quality, acorn fed, variety and eat it sliced wafer thin. The ham that most of us get most of the time—in a ham sandwich or as a slice of ham on our breakfast toast—can be anything between average and chewing bacon.

The point I'm trying, so long windedly, to make is that Spaniards often enthuse about certain food products that you may find uninspirational. There are lots of classic dishes, firm Spanish favourites, that often seem very commonplace. Croquetas are a good example; lots have the consistency of wallpaper paste, are served semi heated and taste of nothing much but, if you strike lucky or know where to go they are exceedingly good. Paella is another dish where the difference between a made to order paella cooked with care and the proper ingredients has nothing in common with the bright yellow rice served as part of a set meal in a tourist restaurant. 

Lots of these foods are rolled out at Christmas - mantecados and polvorones, peladillas, roscones, turrón, angulas, gooseneck barnacles (percebes) while other, all-year-round favourites, get a special outing at Christmas—prawns, croquetas, ham, roast lamb, and around here even broth with meatballs (variously named pelotas, relleno or even faseguras). If you get the opportunity go for the quality stuff - it's usually worth the stretch.

Visiting a bodega

Some friends asked us if we could organise a visit to a bodega. They didn't really mean me, they meant my partner, Maggie. She likes wine, she likes to visit bodegas. Wine is one of her hobbies, she knows a good deal about the local wineries and their products. I count beer and brandy among my hobbies but the focus is somewhat different.

Spain produces a lot of wine. I wasn't quite sure how much or where the country was in the pecking order of wine producers but I was sure the Internet would know. Like so many times before I found that the information is not so cut and dried as you might expect. 

Where Spain ranks in world wine production fits with what may, or may not, be a Spanish urban myth about Italian olive oil. Spaniards say that the oil produced in Spain is shipped in bulk to Italy where it is put into stylish bottles with Italian labels and passed off as Italian. The Italians have, for a long time,  marketed their oil as a top quality product, much better than the humble Spanish equivalent, so it's easy to sell Italian oil at a premium. Spain almost certainly does the same with Iranian saffron. And, for years, Spaniards have argued that they ship wine harvested and produced in Spain to France where it is mixed with the local plonk to produce something more palatable. Again, French wine has more caché than the Spanish product. The French though, who are the biggest importers of Spanish wine, deny the claim and counter attack by saying that Spanish wine is often a mix of Spanish wine with stuff produced in Latin America. I didn't spend too much time trying to unravel this tangled skein of international wine trade name calling. It wasn't what I'd set out to write about. Let's just say that Italy is the biggest wine producer in the world and either Spain or France comes second. The US, the fourth largest producer, has the honour of being the country that drinks most wine.

Until quite recently most wine, nearly everywhere, was pretty rough. For the "pensioner" generation of Spaniards wine was simply a drink. Something, instead of water, to go with food. It was often rough enough to need mixing with casera type gaseosa to make it palatable. It's only relatively recently that most Spanish producers have got around to producing wine under controllable conditions, bottling their wine up and putting labels on it to claim ownership of a fine product. Although the first steps to produce a better quality product go back to a system introduced in 1932 the first real attempt to up-quality wine began with regulations in 1970 which were upgraded in 1988, amended in 1996 and upgraded again in 2003. The current system for good quality wine (see the diagram at the head of this blog) starts with DO (Denominación de Origen), steps up to DOCa (Denominación de Origen calificada) and reaches the zenith in VP (Vino de pago). There are only 20 VP wines in all Spain. Four of them are from our region, Valencia - Finca El Terrerazo, Pago Vera de Estenas, Los Balagueses and Chozas Carrascal.

Whatever the politics and economics of it all we're in a geographically good spot for wine production. We have three areas with the DO quality mark in the Valencian Community - Alicante (this is the one that includes local bodegas like the co-op in Pinoso and our bodega in Culebrón), Utiel-Requena and Valencia. In fact some of the wines in the Valencia region have the next grade up, DOCa status, as well as the Vinos de pago mentioned above. Across the border in Murcia there are three DOs - Bullas, Yecla and Jumilla. Both Jumilla and Yecla share a border with our hometown, Pinoso.

So now we're back to where I wanted to be. Talking about bodega visits. The friends wanted an afternoon visit. A couple of local bodegas said they might be able to do afternoon visits but there were "special circumstances" that made it impossible this time. Basically if you want to visit a bodega it's going to be a morning visit. Unsurprisingly visits at the weekend are the most popular.

There was a time when you could just show up at a bodega and there was an even chance that they'd have someone who could show you around. It was never particularly common and it's certainly not like that any more. Bodega visits are now a business. You need to book up beforehand. Some bodegas are more organised, more reliable than others. We foreigners are often a bit loathe to use the phone, because of the language difficulty, and we think that an email or a WhatsApp message will be easier. Some bodegas will respond to emails and messages but the simple truth is that a phone call is still the surest way to do it. Or to go in person to book of course.

The cost varies. I seem to remember that when Maggie first started dragging me around bodegas we got a couple of tours for free. Maggie tells me that's because I have a dodgy memory (or because of my beer/brandy hobby) but she agrees that the price was usually a nominal 3 to 5€. The visits cost a lot more now. It's impossible to generalise because there are all sorts of offers and the bodegas keep coming up with new ideas. The typical, basic trip, which comes out at around 12-15€ per person, includes being talked through the process of wine making as you stare at stainless steel tanks or oak barrels, followed by a wine tasting with three or four wines. Usually there's a bit of cheese and ham too. 

That experience is now added to in all sorts of ways from the frivolous, shoes and socks off to tread the grapes, to the more upmarket, where a meal becomes part of the tour, through to the plush, luxury weekends where wine and food are mixed with all sorts of pampering. I suppose that the only limits are the imagination of the people offering the programme and the boundaries imposed by any health and safety requirements. I've seen publicity for picnics among vineyards, courses in wine harvesting, full dining experiences with fancy chefs in impressive surroundings, opportunities to taste the wine before it's strictly ready directly from barrels and storage tanks, a day where you get to be the winemaker, blending various wines to make your own designer product, art exhibitions and concerts in bodegas etc., etc.

If you've not visited a bodega, even if you're not a wine buff, it can be an interesting experience. I've done too many but I still enjoy the way that the different bodegas, all of which vary the way they produce the finished product, insist that their way is the best. That's the spirit!

To start here are links to two of the easiest networks for local bodegas. There are many more only a Google away.

Local Alicante bodegas

Local Jumilla bodegas

A bunch of grapes

Around here grapes are grown for eating and for making wine.  Pinoso is a bit too high and a bit too cold, to grow eating grapes, but just down the road in la Romana, Novelda and Aspe they're all over the place. The eating grapes are easy to spot. The most popular variety is called Aledo and it is often grown under plastic, protected from the sun, birds, and other pests by paper bags. The bags slow the grapes’ development and produce a grape that's soft and ripe for picking at the end of the year. How very fortunate that one of Spain's most widespread traditions is that of eating twelve lucky grapes, keeping pace with the midnight chimes of the clock in Madrid's Puerta del Sol, as the old year becomes the new. Nearly all the grapes are from around here and in Murcia.

The grapes in the Pinoso area are for wine. Wine is made from mashed up grapes. Grapes grow in vineyards. They are harvested and taken to a nearby bodega, winery, where they are turned into different types of wine. Red wine, rosé wine and white wine can all be made with red grapes. Green grapes can only, naturally, be used to produce white wine. When people ask for a wine in a bar or buy a bottle in a shop they might ask by grape type or region. There is a sometimes a link between the region and the grape - for example tempranillo grapes are the most common for Rioja wines and Sherry is made with palomino grapes. On the other hand Chardonnay grapes are grown worldwide so a Chardonnay could be a wine from the grape's native Burgundy or from places as diverse as Chile, New Zealand and Sussex. Wine bottles always say what grape type was used to make the wine.

The most common grape variety around Pinoso is monastrell. Lots of other types of grape are grown here but monastrell is the local variety. Monastrell doesn't need a lot of water, it doesn't need decent soil and it can deal with enormous daily temperature variations. The monastrell vines are usually cut back to the bare stump at the end of each season. In the past, to attain a quality mark, the vines had to be planted in a certain pattern. Looking at the vineyards you can see horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines of plants. New regulations allow growers to use different planting patterns and still get the quality mark. It will take years for things to change so you can still show off your local knowledge by pointing out the vineyards, with the traditional pattern. You can, sagely, add that these grapes will be picked by hand so they will be used in better quality wines. Machine picking bruises the fruit. The vines planted so the tendrils can grow up a wire support are for machine picking. The wine made from these machine picked grapes is still largely exported in tanker lorries, usually to France, where it is mixed with the local wine to produce a much more palatable end product.

All over Spain certain types of food and drink are given a quality mark. The scheme is usually called Denominación de Origen Protegida or DOP. The idea is that the quality is kept up by specifying what the ingredients should be, where those ingredients should come from and how those ingredients should be processed. By keeping up the quality of the traditional product it's possible to maintain a premium price. The local denominación is Alicante but just over the border into Murcia we have Jumilla and Yecla too. So, the next time you have visitors make sure you buy at least one bottle with denominación written on the label and you'll have a ready made topic for that awkward conversational lull that happens, every now and then, even with friends.