Wine tasting in Catalonia - from Espolla to CadaqúesIt’s been a hot couple of weeks here trekking around northern Catalonia. From the homeland and backdrop to surrealist Salvador Dali’s world to dramatic remnants of the volcano park an hour away, this place is a land of rough-hewn vistas and rustic hospitality. The Catalonian political upheaval of recent times is represented in slogans painted on just about any surface from walls in the towns to derelict buildings on desolate country roads.

We sit down each morning with a Catalonian carpenter who pours an inch of red wine into his glass to help his digestion. I taste the wine with a little morning sausage and tomato and have to admit it tastes pretty good. Driving through villages we stop off at the wine cooperatives to taste the range of their wines that are typically rustic red with a nice kiss of American and French or Hungarian oak, dry slightly bitter whites and fortified sweet wines. They are good for the climate and the cuisine. 

So many large breakfasts mean that a forced morning walk out of the village into the olive groves and vineyards is added to the routine. It is very hot, sometimes getting up to 38ºC, but that helps the body process the new dietary regime. The landscape is dry, influenced by the mediterranean but also at times freshly swept over by the northerly winds that are blowing down across the Pyrenees. 

Grape varieties include lots of garnacha negro, garnacha blanco, some chardonnay, cabernet, muscat de Alexandria and Samsó. The latter has been explained to me both as cinsault and as carignan. Whichever it is I have been hugely impressed by wines that include blends of samsó, cabernet, and garnacha negro. When aged for 6-12 months in oak they a develop rich texture with attractive dark fruit and leather characteristics. The American oaked wines have a trademark vanilla character that will be popular with many rioja drinkers. These are well-suited wines for the heavy workers' meals they serve here, like rabbit, pigs trotters (tried it and would have died without the chilled tinto to break down the fat). 

Wine tasting Dali, Espolla Spain

The white wines are fresh and redolent of the landscape when the wind blows across the trees. Green olives, slightly bitter with flora and fauna that moves effortlessly from the glass to the palate. I like the taste as much as the view. Again some of these wines get much better when they have attention bestowed on them. A little lees stirring and ageing and there are glimpses of another level.

The sweet wines from this corner of the Med are a hidden wonder. I have been traveling from Bordeaux through Roussillon, picking up Rivesaltes sweet wines and Banyuls. The wines between Espolla and the coast are being snuck into the back of the car. We’ll find out very shortly if they travel well.

If you are visiting Catalonia in the near future, get out into the country and taste the food, smell the rich aromas that blow across the land, but most of all indulge the wines at every opportunity. 

 

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Last week a picture was posted on Twitter of vines in Shabo, a large estate that lies to the west of Odesa on southern Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline. The image seemed benign at face value but the reality, of course, is that the city of Odesa has been bracing itself for attack by Russian forces. 

 

As COVID-19 conspires with the grimmest of winds and rain to force a societal retreat behind our own front doors, the word ennui springs to mind. The muddle of displeasure is pierced when Natalia hands me a large bulbous glass of a liquid I do not recognise.

 

 

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On the eve of Britain’s official departure from the EU, my partner and I decided to explore a small town on the Italian Riviera where thewintry cold doesn’t feel so much like cold war bite.

I had warned my significant other that I would be having an inverse departure party, a release of the sanity valve if you like!

 

Sitting inside the ancient castle walls inside the town of Soave, a short drive from Verona in northern Italy, the unique slightly almond aroma of the indigenous grape, Garganega, rises gently from my glass. The castle sprawls up the side of an extinct volcano that gives the region its variant soil structures that mark out the better quality of Soave wines.

 

Tanisha Townsend decided to move to Paris 4 years ago after regularly passing through the city en route to the world’s most famous vineyards. In fact, it was about 2 years ago at the Printemps de Champagne Bouzy Rouge tasting in Reims that I saw (who we shall now refer to as) GirlMeetsGlass chirpily speaking to her web followers on Snapchat.

 

The cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, the final resting place of Saint James, rises out of the landscape, infested with antiquity. The rambling steep streets give way to shafts of dramatic light, emblazoned chapels, and tightly packed tapas bars, dusty, as old novels pressed together in antiquarian bookshops.

 

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