Life in Culebrón

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 th...

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 hum...

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 ...