The fiesta-loving Spaniards have drawn the short straw this year. Christmas Eve, the main day for celebrating Christmas in Spain, falls on a Friday so most people will work until midday and then be back at their desks or machines on Monday: only a half-day net holiday. Next year will be even worse! Spain is not alone as most of mainland Europe celebrates Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day (although curiously the Catalans are among the latter.)
It’s been quite a week, with three wine-tastings (more about these in a future post), innumerable lunches and a very enjoyable outdoor Spanish cheese festival – regrettably spoilt by heavy rain!
Tonight, Nochebuena) I am off to spend the evening with some friends and, although I am (surprise, surprise) responsible for the wine selection, I have no idea what the food will be. If it follows typical Spanish custom it will be shellfish a-gogo followed by sea bass (lubina) baked in the oven. In Madrid, especially, all fish and shellfish prices triple or quadruple over Christmas in Spain and the always expensive baby eels (angulas) become prohibitive, not to mention the langostinos and percebes (the limpet-like shellfish harvested in Galicia by fishermen hanging by ropes on cliff faces, of which quite a few perish each year).
Slowly, but ever so slowly, other festive occasion dishes are becoming popular over Christmas in Spain. Goose is more widely seen in the markets, and of course turkey, although this is often served in a stew rather than roasted. The dessert is always the same though, Turrón (like nougat) and a variety of cloyingly-sweet pastries and the hideous polverones, drunk, as I have mentioned in a previous post, with anis.
Typical Spanish wines for Nochebuena are always, but always, red Riojas and Ribera del Dueros and, as at Nochevieja (New Year), an awful lot of cider gets drunk, probably more this year than usual, as an economical substitute for Spanish cava.
As I get older I am beginning to think the best thing about these special occasions is the opportunity to drink something special, (as there is usually nothing new on the food front).
So, as my contribution to the feast, I will be taking an 8-year-old bottle of Krug Reserve champagne and, while I am rather a philistine in being perfectly happy with Spanish cava, this bottle is special as it was given to me personally by Michel Krug in 2002. Since it will already have had several years on the clock back then -I do not want to risk opening it and finding it has gone off to that big champagne graveyard in the sky where there is not a bubble to be seen!
The white wine will be Protos’s new Verdejo from Rueda and I have been fortunate to receive a magnum of Cortijo de Aguilares’s Pago del Espino. This Spanish wine, from Ronda, is actually my favourite from the Bodega, even over and above their Pinot Noir which won the ‘best pinot noir in the world’ first prize at a 2,000-wine blind tasting in Switzerland last year.
Last week, at some friends’ Christmas party, the (Luxembourger) host produced three bottles of Armagnac. One was 1954, another 1944 and yet another 1941. The hand-written labels and wax seals showed them to be almost handmade. While people generally concur that spirits never go off, even when opened, it was a bit of an eye-opener to taste the first two wines from opened bottles and then the 1941 from a virgin bottle. It was obvious that the ‘new’ 1941 had much more flavour and a better bite to it than the others did.
The artisan cheese fair was held in the park, and in spite of the appalling weather (130 litres of rain fell that day) more than half of the planned 40 exhibitors turned up to huddle under plastic sheets.
Most of the producers were members of the Asociación de Queseros de Andalucia and make the mainly goats’ cheese on their farms. Los Balanchares (www.losbalanchares.com) from Córdoba is relatively well-known and makes organic cheese. Quesería La Hortelana of Coín (Málaga) also has some notable cheeses, as does Pajaret, Vilamartín, (Cádiz). Best thing was the price as I could buy them direct from the producers. The weather was so appalling I bought more than I normally would, just to cheer up the glum-looking exhibitors and a Finnish friend, who came with me, Tommy R, bought even more than I did – although what they will think of goats’ cheese in Finland I have yet to hear…
Anyway, a Merry Christmas to all my followers – there will lots more about Spanish wine and food in the New Year!
