Life in Culebrón

Have you noticed that the Spaniards drink their beer cold? I mean cold. Not chilled; cold. If you go into a bar, run by people of other nationalities, in Spain, the difference can be noticeable. That idea of crisp, cool and refreshing is one of the reasons why telly adverts associate friends laughing together, eating together, swimming at the beach and drinking beer together with summer. Beer isn't a traditional Spanish drink, it didn't really take off  till the 1970s and it wasn't till 1982 that beer took over from wine as the biggest selling alcoholic drink.  Spaniards notice when Britons, and other Northern Europeans, put ice in their wine. Odd really considering that Spaniards pour their hot coffee and tea over ice all summer through. When you're out and about, when it's too late at night to drink beer or wine, and we move on to mixed drinks nearly all of them get ice. When the Spanish mix a copa - spirit and mixer type drinks like rum and coke or vodka and lemo...

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 ...

I'm not such a big fan of wine. It's not that I don't drink it but I'd nearly always go for other sorts of booze first. Maggie, my partner, on the other hand, is a bit of an enthusiast. One of the things she often does is to take our visitors on one of the bodega tours. Indeed, years ago, she used to organise tours for tourists as a business venture so we got to know nearly all of the bodegas in Jumilla and Yecla and a good number of the bodegas close to Pinoso that allow visits. Jumilla, Yecla and Alicante all produce wines that have Denominación de Origen Protegida (protected designation of origin) as well as wines more suited to drain unblocking or unarmed combat. Lots of the stuff that isn't D.O.P. is shipped to other countries, particularly France, where it is mixed with local wine and then sold as being from that country. The unloved wine is the sort of wine that you would use for things where any old wine will do - preserving fruits, cooking, turning into vin...

It's Constitution Day today. We're celebrating the 39th anniversary of the document that formalised the new order and the end of the dictatorship.  In Pinoso Town Hall yesterday there was a reading of some of the articles of the Constitution by members of the community. Obviously it couldn't be today. Today is a holiday and the Town Hall wouldn't be open on a holiday. I thought I'd go and have a look. I got there nearly at the beginning, the Mayor was doing the opening spiel but I couldn't get into the room where the reading was taking place because the door was blocked by the throng of people waiting to read their bit of the document. I'm not sure if there were people inside the room, an audience, or not. Peering in all I could see was someone standing behind a tripod videoing the whole thing. When I said hello to Colin, there to read his bit and presumably a representative of my clan, someone shushed me so I decided to give it up as a spectator sport. I...

One of my standard responses to anyone who asks for a description of Culebrón is to say that we have a restaurant, a bodega and a post box. I should perhaps change the bodega to say bodega/almazara because Brotons produces both wine and olive oil. A bodega (in this sense) is a winery and an almazara is an oil mill I went to get some oil the other day and I was a bit shocked when Paco, one of the owners, wanted 20€ for the five litre plastic bottle. It wasn't the price that was a shock, it was the difference in price between this and my last purchase. I'm sure it was 15€ last time.  On the label the description of the oil says that it is de extracción en frio which means that it is cold pressed. I don't quite know what that means. My, very simple, understanding of olive oil is that the very green stuff, the extra virgin olive oil is the best, produced from the finest olives, whilst virgin oil is made with slightly riper or damaged olives which makes it slightly more acidic...

It was, I think, called the Wine Resource Centre - well it wasn't because it's name was in Valenciá - but now it is called Centro de Interpretación Casa del Marmól y del Vino - The Sociocultural Institution for the Interpretation of Marble and Wine. Casa doesn't translate easily in this context. Even then you think they could have worked on something snappier. Perhaps the reason they haven't got around to giving the exhibit a new sign is that they are going to need quite a big board to fit all those words on. The idea had been talked about for quite a long time but the actual implementation seemed to happen with remarkable speed. Perhaps funding had to be spent to a timetable or somesuch. Perhaps that's why there is no sign. The idea of a celebration of wine and marble is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in Pinoso where the two are big economic activities. Marble is the biggest moneyspinner in the town by far because of the huge open cast quarry. It's ow...

Maggie likes wine. It's no secret. She likes a good Rioja and she likes Ribera del Duero too. But Maggie thinks it's very unfair that so few people recognise the quality of some of our local wine particularly the product from the Jumilla wine region. Jumilla shares a border with Pinoso so it's very local. We also share a border with Yecla which has a separate quality mark for its wine and, of course, we are in Alicante which produces some excellent wine too. We even have a small bodega in Culebrón village. There are lots of bodegas to visit but some tours and some wine are better than others. Maggie likes to eat out. She can wax lyrical about some of the local food though she can also be disparaging about the chop and chips menus of so many places. You have to know where to go she says. You need local knowledge. Maggie says that we have some breathtaking scenery around here. I can't disagree. Sometimes just driving up from La Romana or over to Yecla I just break...