Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

The Wines of the Canary Islands - Article in Wines From Spain News

2012-12-18T09:53:00.003-05:00

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(Originally posted 8/29/2009)

The Wines of the Canary Islands

Article by Gerry Dawes in Wines From Spain News Fall 2009
(Click on above link to see the article.)

(Double click on images to see enlarged version on Picasa.)

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About Gerry Dawes

Adventures in Spanish Taste: Insider's Food, Wine, Cultural and Photographic Travel in Spain

The Traveling Gastronomer: A Celebration of Food, Wine, Life, Photography & Quixotic Musings

The Spanish Artisan Wine Group

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

Having a Drink with Gerry Dawes by Jordi Melendo, Verema.com

2012-01-18T14:07:00.002-05:00

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Tomando una copa con… Gerry Dawes
(Click here to read the interview in Spanish)

Drinking Godello at Estado Puro in Madrid.
Photo by Harold Heckle, Associated Press, Madrid.

Gerry Dawes vive en Nueva York y es escritor, fotógrafo y conferenciante especialista en la gastronomía, los vinos y la cultura de España. Vivió en Andalucía durante ocho años, lleva casi 40 viajando por el país y tiene un promedio de siete viajes gastronómicos anuales a España. Fue galardonado con el Premio Nacional de Gastronomía “Marqués de Busianos” 2003 por la Academia Española de Gastronomía y La Cofradía de la Buena Mesa y es el único extranjero honrado con el Premio Cena de los Once Vinos. Es Contributing Editor de Food Arts, Wine News, Santé y varias revistas del ICEX y ha publicado centenares de artículos sobre los vinos, la gastronomía y viajes de España.

Ha presentado ponencias y presentaciones en Culinary Institute of America - Napa Valley, Christie's New York, Encuentro Verema (Valencia), Philadelphia Museum of Art (seis cenas durante la exposición de Dalí), International Association of Culinary Professionals (Congreso Anual), IberWine, Madrid Fusión, Fenavin, Vino a Toda Vela y presentador de los Spain's Ten (10 mejores chefs españoles en New York). Fue Chairman de la Cena-Subasta James Beard Fundation en 2004 que fue dedicado a España, honró a Ferran Adrià y Juan Mari Arzak y batió todos los records de la fundación. Fue seleccionado para dar una charla, sobre la gastronomía, vinos y cultura de Valencia en una cena de en honor de Francisco Camps, presidente de la Generalitat Valenciana en New York (Abril, 2005).

Having a drink with … Gerry Dawes

One of your virtues:

I am loyal to my friends, especially my real friends, most of whom are in Spain.

One of your faults:

I am addicted to Spain and I am always trying to do more than is humanly possible, which causes me problems.

A virtue you value in others:

Loyalty, honesty and patience, qualities which many of my Spanish friends have.

A fault you detest in others:

Dishonesty. And the love of new oak taste of over the taste of wine. I truly detest Parkerista-style wines.

Recommend a white wine:

Palacio de Fefiñanes Albariño (unoaked, with a few years in bottle.)

A Coroa Godello

Casal Novo Godello (my house white wine)

Pena Das Donas Godello

D. Ventura Mencia red wines from Ribeira Sacra

A rosé wine:

Señorío de Sarría Garnacha Rosado Viñedo #5 (one of the greatest rosé wines in the world.)

A red wine:

A great older vintage of CUNE Viña Real Oro such a 1954, 1962, 1981; Viña Bosconia 1947; Marqués de Riscal 1945 and Riscal wines from the 1920s; young, fresh, terroir-driven Mencia from Ribeira Sacra.

A Cava:

Raventos i Blanc , also Gramona or Agusti Torelló; also love good dry Pinot Noir Rosado cavas

And a Champagne:

Pol Roger, which I have had every Christmas and New Year’s Eve since 1976; I also love Bollinger, André Clouet and Champagnes that use Pinot Noir; and especially the great Rosé Champagnes.

If you had to choose just one wine which would it be:

A great dry Garnacha Rosado with good acidity, which goes with all kinds of food. They are fresh, festive, fun, satisfying and normally have no oak. And sometimes, a fine manzanilla fina de Sanlúcar

And who would you drink it with:

The most important thing about any bottle of wine is the people surrounding the bottle:

My girlfriend, Kay. And over lunch with any (or all) of these great friends, Mariano García, Basilio Izquierdo, Javier Hidalgo, Emiliano García, Juan Gil (Galicia), Emilo Cores, Manolo & Mari Carmen Esquivias, Ambrosia Molinos & family in Roa, Isaacín Muga, Juan Suarez, Esmeralda Capel, Gabriela Llamas, Lucio, Mari & Javier Blásquez, Quím Marqués, Fuensanta Bartolomeu, José Manuel Rodríguez (Ribeira Sacra), María José San Román (y Pitu, Jorge y Geni), Adolfo Muñoz & family in Toledo, Juli Soler, George Semler, el banda de gente in Sanfermínes, Raúl Aleixandre, Juan Peña, Paco Dovalo, Javier Luca de Tena, José Andrés Carlos Falcó, Ricardo Pérez, Raúl Pérez, Pepe Limeño, the Pérez Pascuas family, Alejandro Fernández, Los Tios de Verema (José, Juan, Paco) y Las Gamberras de Chipiona. . . I have mentioned just a few and I have left out many—with profound apologies--but I am sure you only so much space.

Your favourite meal:

I have several: Rodaballo at either Kaia or Elkano in Getaria; Mariscos in Galicia, especially with Gerardo Mendez of Do Ferreiro; any meal at Bigote in Sanlúcar de Barrameda; chuletillas al sarmiento at Bodegas Pérez Pascuas; breakfast at Quím de la Boquería or Pinotxo in La Boquería; pochas con codornices in Navarra; alcachofas con jamon in La Balconada in Chinchón; arrós negre in Can Majo in Barcelona; any meal in Ca Sento in Valencia; Sunday nights at Casa Lucio in Madrid; salmorejo con berenjenas fritas at Juan Peña in Córdoba; arrós con caracoles y conejo at Casa Elias in Xinorlet; any lunch at Bodegas Muga, el menu de Gerry Dawes in La Taberna del Gourmet in Alicante; and a box of chocolates from Paco Torreblanca. There are many, many more.

Your favourite restaurant:

As you can see, I have many favourites. And I have been known to make pilgrimages to many restaurants scattered all over Spain. I love Bigote looking out on Bajo Guía in Sanlúcar, Kaia looking out on the fishing port and Basque Coast in Getaria; I love to take the ferry to Casa Cámara in Pasai Donibane (Pasajes de San Juan); and I love to eat La Balconada or Café Iberia in Chinchón overlooking La Plaza Mayor. Tengo muchos.

Your favourite city:

Madrid, many days; Barcelona, many days; Sanlúcar always and forever; mi Sevilla; San Sebastián; Valencia; Haro; Cambados; Chinchón; Getaria; too many to pick, but you get the idea.

Your favourite country:

Spain is the greatest country in the world. Nothing else comes close. The reason: See “And who would you drink it with.”

Which do you prefer, the seaside or the mountains:

So many choices, so little time. I love to be in Sanlúcar anytime and I love the Rías of Galicia, but I also love the mountains of Galicia, Andalucía, Navarra, La Rioja and the Picos de Europa.

Which mode of transport do you prefer:

Automobile outside of cities. It’s a freedom thing. Walking, metro or water ferry in some places.

Recommend a book:

Don Quixote; Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert; The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; Iberia by James Michener; and my Homage to Iberia (if I ever find a publisher with cojones).

A song:

“As Time Goes By” from Casablanca; and “Yo Soy del Sur”

A film: Casablanca

What is your favourite sport:

Baseball (I am addicted to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who haven’t been winners for 17 years--sort of like being “Zoy del Beti”--and American football (New York Giants). I also follow Spanish football when I am in Spain. I was in the riot on the Ramblas when Barça confirmed a few years ago and the last game I saw was on the tele. I saw Atletico de Madrid beat Barça in La Bodegueta in San Celoni with Santi Santamaría and George Semler, which left both of them de luto (in mourning).

What is your favourite colour:

Wine red (unoaked tint) and the brilliant wedding ring gold color of great Godello.

Which is your favourite man’s name:

Cayetano

Which is your favourite woman’s name:

Victoria

Which historical personality would you have liked to have met in person:

Ernest Hemingway (maybe),

Miguel de Cervantes (when he wasn’t in jail),

Salvador Dalí (I know, I know),

King Juan Carlos I (I only briefly shook his hand);

Elroy Face (A Pittsburgh Pirates relief pitcher from the 1950s & 1960s)

and Antonio Ordoñez, whom I did meet and became friends with before he died).

Which three things would you take with you to a desert island:

My girlfriend, Kay; enough Patrón tequila, Torres Licor de Naranja, grapefruit juice (the island had better have limes & lemons) to make margaritas; Hendrick’s gin & Fever Tree tonica for variety; and vinos de Godello, Garnacha Rosado and Viña Real Oro to keep me going until I get off the island (I am not enamored of islands, too constricting ultimately); and my laptop with a power supply.

About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine.

Trailer filmed in Valencia & Alicante for a reality television

series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Food Arts Silver Spoon Award December 2009

Gallery of Chefs & Food Personalities: Portraits by Gerry Dawes

Web Pages:

Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

Adventures in Spanish Taste: Insider's Food, Wine, Cultural and Photographic Travel in Spain

The Traveling Gastronomer: A Celebration of Food, Wine, Life, Photography & Quixotic Musings

The Spanish Artisan Wine Group

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

"Men! You always want more, even when you're skinning the poor by tearing down a block of old houses to make nice new ones." - - Fortunata y Jacinta, Benito Pérez Galdós

2012-01-17T23:35:00.001-05:00

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Cover: Detail from Chica in a Bar (1892) by Ramón Casas,

in El Museo de la Abadía, Montserrat (Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library)

“. . . Since you tear things down, do you have any rubble, yes or no?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact I do. . .and some magnificent flint (slate). Sixty reales (a unit of Spanish money) the cartful, all you want. The rubble is eight reales a--Oh, I'm so stupid! Now I know what it's all about. The great saint (philantropist Guillermina Pacheco) is bamboozling you with stories about the orphanage she's going to build. . .You've got to be careful with her tricks, very careful. Before she's laid a stone she'll have us all in the poorhouse."

"Shhh! We all know how stingy you are. I'm not asking your for anything anyway, you old miser. You can have your carts of flint (slate). They'll put them on the scales with you when the final accounting starts; you know, when the trumpets start to play. Oh yes, and then when you see how much your stinginess weighs on the scales, you'll say, "Lord, take away these cartloads of stone and rubble that are plunging me into Hell,' and we'll all say, 'Oh no. Pile it on, because he's very wicked.'"

"All I have to do is put the money you've squeezed out of me on the other side of the scales and I'm saved," Moreno laughed, patting her face.

"Don't humor me, my dear nephew. That won't get you anywhere, you big cheat, swindler, miser!" Guillermina was smiling, and her tone was benevolent. "Men! You always want more, even when you're skinning the poor by tearing down a block of old houses to make nice new ones." - - Guillermina Pacheco in Fortunata y Jacinta, Benito Pérez Galdós's incredible novel of life and social commentary in 19th Century Spain, centered in Madrid. The Penguin Books translation by Agnes Moncy Gullón is exceptional.

The Passing of My Old Friend Don Clarke, Artist Par Excellence, in Mijas, (Málaga), Spain Jan. 16, 2012. Que Decanses en Paz, Don.

2012-01-17T20:13:00.004-05:00

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My old friend English artist Don Clarke in his studio in Mijas (Málaga), Spain on Feb. 15, 2010.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2010 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

Looking Back on the Wines of La Mancha, The Wine News, Oct.-Nov. 2003

2012-01-17T19:52:00.005-05:00

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La Mancha, text and photos by Gerry Dawes, The Wine News, Page 50,
October/November 2003. (Pages 50-56; Page 53 was an advertisement.)

The rest of the La Mancha wine article.
(Double click on the images to enlarge.

Spanish Mushrooms, Setas, Hongos, etc. and Mushroom Dishes (With More to Come)

2012-01-13T22:30:00.005-05:00

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Setas, sauteed mushrooms in cazuela (clay dish), served with
Valdespino Tio Dego Amontillado Sherry, Jerez de la Frontera.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2006 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

Side show on mushrooms from around Spain.
(Double click on lower right corner to go to Picasa web album,
then at upper left click on slide show for an enlarged version.)
Any comments or corrections will be very much appreciated.

E-mail: gerrydawes@aol.com

Decency because you wear something called a frock coat! What a farce humanity is. The poor always the underdogs, the rich doing as they please. I’m rich. I’m frivolous, I know it. -- Juanito Santa Cruz in Fortunata y Jacinta, Benito Pérez Galdós Epic Novel of 19th Century Spain

2012-01-11T19:11:00.001-05:00

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Cover: Detail from Chica in a Bar (1892) by Ramón Casas,

in El Museo de la Abadía, Montserrat (Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library)

“Let’s face it: the truth should come first, before everything else. She worshiped me. She thought I wasn’t like everyone else; that I was the essence of a gentleman, and breeding, and decency, and nobility, in person; the end-all of men. . .Nobility! What a joke! Nobility in my lies. It can’t be, I tell you. It simply can’t. Decency because you wear something called a frock coat! What a farce humanity is. The poor always the underdogs, the rich doing as they please. I’m rich. I’m frivolous, I know it.

The picturesque charm was wearing off. If it is charming, crudeness is seductive for a while, but then it makes you sick at your stomach. The burden I’d taken on was heavier every day. The smell of garlic was starting to disgust me. I even wished–and believe me, it’s the truth–that Pitusa were worthless so I could give her the gate. . . but, no, she wasn’t one of those. Her worthless? Not on your life. If I’d told her to throw herself into a fire she would’ve plunged in head first.” - - Juanito Santa Cruz, a character in Fortunata y Jacinta, a 19th Century Spanish novel by Benito Pérez Galdós, relating his affair with Pitusa (Fortunata), an affair that took place before he was married, to his wife, Jacinta. This soul searching encounter takes place in an inn in Sevilla on their honeymoon after Jacinta coaxes the story out of Juanito.

“The common people are very naive. . ." from Fortunata y Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós

2012-01-11T17:00:00.001-05:00

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Cover: Detail from Chica in a Bar (1892) by Ramón Casas,

in El Museo de la Abadía, Montserrat (Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library)

“The common people are very naive, they’re just plain stupid. They’ll believe anything you tell them as long as you use pretty words. She fell for me, hook, line, and sinker, and I just walked off with her honor–thought nothing of it. Men, us señoritos I mean, are a rotten lot; we think that the honor of a village girl is just a toy for us. . .And after having my fun with her, I left her to fend for herself, in the gutter. . .like a bitch. Didn’t I?” - - Juanito Santa Cruz to his wife, Jacinta, characters in Fortunata y Jacinta, a 19th Century Spanish novel by Benito Pérez Galdós.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns with Alicante Chef María José San Román, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2012 Slide Show

2012-01-10T00:01:00.009-05:00

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María José San Román serving her arroz a banda 'Taberna'
(paella with shrimp and fresh squid from La Taberna del Gourmet in Alicante)
at the Jaleo Crystal City Paella Festival opening party in 2010.

Slide show, lunch at Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

Double click on images for enlarged view.

(Full captions to follow.)

Lo Mejor de la Gastronomía's The Best Tapas Bar in Spain: Chef María José San Román La Taberna del Gourmet in Alicante, a Persistence of Memory Dalí Five-Watch Dining Experience

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About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.

Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by star chef José Andrés.

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009.

Trailer for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

Photo Opp / Cigalas (Dublin Bay prawns) at Pontevedra Municipal market, Galicia.

2012-01-09T18:07:00.001-05:00

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Cigalas (Dublin Bay prawns) at Pontevedra Municipal market, Galicia.

________________________________________________________________________________

About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by star chef José Andrés.

Trailer for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

Ferran Adría, Salvador Dalí and Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate

2012-01-09T09:11:00.004-05:00

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Ouefs Sur le Plat (Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate).

From Dalí's Ouefs Sur le Plat (Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate), we may be seeing a painting that could have inspired Catalan super-star chef, Ferran Adría, to pass over into a new dimension of food with such dishes as a mango "egg yolk" served on a Chinese spoon, ravioli de mango, melón caviar (a ringer for samon caviar, made from melón puree dropped into a calcium chloride solution), spaghetto de parmesano (two yards plus of spaghetto made from Parmesan cheese), etc., all dishes that Dalí would have understood instantly. (Also see Memories of the Superb 2005 Dalí Exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)

Adventures in Spanish Taste: Insider's Food, Wine, Cultural and Photographic Travel in Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

The Amazing Parkenstein Chronicles from Ron Washam, The HoseMaster of Wine

2012-01-07T10:11:00.001-05:00

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Ron Washam, the HoseMaster of Wine, and His Incredible Parkenstein.

Go to The HoseMaster of Wine blog and read the entire parody and the follow-up comments, many of which are hilarious.

As with all parodies, satires and send-ups, there is more than a grain of truth. In 'Parkenstein,' there is a vast cornfield stretching as far as the eye can see--and it has all gone to seed. Pancho Campo MW, Parkenstein's partner in (alleged) vigorish skimming, should thank his lucky stars that the Ron Washam, HMW is not as familiar with his story on the Spanish side of the pond.

(The emphasis and underscoring are mine--GD.)

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

PARKENSTEIN!

Monkton, MD, 20 October, 20__

My Dearest Sister,

And so it was that I made the acquaintance of Robert Parkenstein on my stop in Maryland. He was washed up on shore, but, then, I was later to learn that he had been washed up for a very long time, a victim of his nefarious scheme to defy Creation and play God himself. And as we were marooned in the God-forsaken shithole that is Monkton, my ship awaiting better weather, the storm blowing harder than a Michelle Bachman speech, I heard the horrifying and sad story that is Parkenstein’s. We had long hours to talk, and I came to feel sorry for him, though it was simple hubris that destroyed him. That and his mortuarial creation. I will tell his story in his words as I remember them, though his breath was most foul, smelling of hedonism and Gruner Veltliner, and it was hard to be in a small room with him as he had the figure and charm of a beanbag chair.

I became fascinated with power, Parkenstein told me, and the more power I accumulated, the more I felt this feverish desire to transfer it to another being, to give power to a cipher of my own creation. The thought obsessed me. Yes, I had created monsters before, horrible monsters—Turleystein and Rollandstein and that hideous Kranklstein—but they had life before I gave them power. I wanted to start from scratch. I wanted to give life and power. And I believed I could do it. There was nothing I couldn’t do, aside from duplicate my scores in a blind setting.

I set about obtaining parts for my creation. I thought it would be difficult, this assembling a windbag, this scavenging for a bag for my douche, but it wasn’t. There was Craigslist. “Man seeking body parts,” read my ad, “won’t pay an arm and a leg.” In less than a day I was overwhelmed with offers. A man in Napa Valley offered me the head of his late father, but he wanted 100 points in exchange, and I don’t trade points for money, I trade them for integrity. But I had mountains of body parts to choose from, and I selected carefully and, I believed, wisely.

I worked day and night, removing the parts from my freezer as I needed them, at one point mistaking a fish stick for a penis. I was so crazed I forgot to change it. It was only later, when it was alive, that I noticed him sticking packets of tartar sauce from H. Salt down his pants hoping to attract someone horny and hungry, and let the chips fall where they may. Time was of the essence, for as the parts thawed, my house began to smell like corruption. Little did I know…Parkenstein toasts his Creation--the HORROR!!

Finally, he was assembled. I beheld my creation. To me, he was beautiful. Perfect for the life and power I intended to bestow upon him. He was bulky, I confess, a nod to my own physique, a visual clue that the good life is about overindulgence, and, more importantly, the unquenchable need to talk about it, to rub it in the faces of my followers, to write endlessly of gluttony and debauchery with the eloquence to make it seem desirable and admirable in a world of starving people, and people who would sell body parts to a madman for a pittance just to buy a bottle of one of my Best Buys Under $20. I’d used the arms and hands of a maitre-d’ to give him the natural gift of taking handouts and bribes. I’d found the brain, only slightly used, of a fellow hedonist who’d gone insane, and I took it, leaving him still functioning, yet no one could tell his skull was empty because it had always appeared that way, and never more so than recently. So with my creation’s head full of Suckling, I had to find the right nose. The nose, the most important part of my monster, the part that would define him. I had to carefully pick my nose. Hell, I thought, I know how to do that, I was once an attorney.

And so it was that I gave him the nose of a Bassett Hound. It just made sense. His nose would be sensitive, powerful, and forever in my butt, where there’s plenty of room for everyone. I was ready to give him life.

To be continued...

Posted by Ron Washam, HMW at 3:45 PM 35 comments

Labels: PARKENSTEIN

Monday, January 2, 2012

PARKENSTEIN! Part the Second

Monkton, MD, 22 October 20__

My Dearest Sister,

Parkenstein had been the most powerful critic in his field, feared as a man fears his God, his every proclamation a Judgment Day on a 100 Point Scale, his commandments followed assiduously if not asininely. Thou shalt not filter, nor fine, nor covet thy neighbor’s bunghole. Thou shalt not worship false Gods, Tanzers and BurgHounds of Hell, for their palates are the spawn of Satan, and that spawn is slightly salty, with a creamy texture, and tastes of asparagus and hedonistic DNA. Thou shalt not question my scores, for they are the Word and are Blessed, and are not subject to your mortal and weaker tastes. Parkenstein, now washed up on the shores of Monkton, found his commandments no longer relevant or obeyed, his power vanished, his name, once spoken in reverent whispers, now spoken with contempt and the insertion of noises that emulate the flatulence of a Shanken, which is Almighty Flatulence. But I shall let Parkenstein tell his own story.

My Creation, my monster, if you will [Parkenstein said to me], for he was at once beautiful and horrible to behold, like Nancy Grace only less manly, lay on the table awaiting life. He was a blob, a meaningless mound of fat and muscle and more fat, and he would be worthless until I bestowed upon him life and power. And when I gave him life, everyone would have to concede my infinite power and infallibility. Even blobbers, who are scum, the living excrement of Poodles.

I gave him life as a mother gives life. I suckled him at my own breast. My man-tits were fully developed, often admired and jealously envied, and when I placed one on the monster’s lips, he awoke! He had tasted the milk of my genius and it had given him life. It had been wise to give him a Suckling brain, for he took to it instantly. The monster arose, stared at me with the mouth-breathing gaze of an imbecile I would come to know well, and said his first words, “What’s it worth to you?”

Yet most of the monster’s speech was made up of grunts and snorts and slurping sounds. I had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams—he already spoke like a critic. Now my job would be to give the monster the tools it would take for him to function as my surrogate so that I could transfer my power unto him. One day I would unleash him on the world and his bequeathed power would make him a man, make him a god, and I would be the god-maker! I was crazy with lust, with a lust for omnipotence and power. I felt indomitable, I felt indestructible, I felt immortal. Parkenstein! I destroyed and created at will. My words, my numbers, were as if written in stone and carried down from the mountaintop by brave knights and their blithering idiot Squires (and his bulletin board).

I was at the pinnacle of my profession, and yet I needed more. I needed immortality, and I knew it was not just one, but a procession of monsters I needed to create, a roving band of nonhuman Parkenstein robots who would not be me, but would carry my authority, would be my army of ventriloquist dummies, their opinions voiced as if they were their own. My first monster was just the beginning, I understood in that instant of creation, and one day I would have a retinue of monsters with borrowed brains who were mere impersonations of real humans, and the better for it. Real humans would never follow me.

Parkenstein Losing Face

I see now that my hubris blinded me, and was my downfall. I thought I could pass along my own success and power to creatures of my own making, as one might pass along goobers at a baseball game and in return pass back the money for them, for my monsters were clearly nuts and I certainly ended up with all the money.

It was a horrible blunder, and one that has left me in the pathetic state you see me in now. I had created this monster and one day he would destroy me, just as modern man has declared God is dead and destroyed Him. But that was in the future then, as were the other horrible monsters I would create, and that moment I gave birth to the monster and decided to ship him to Spain I remember as a glorious and wondrous achievement. I wonder now how I could have been so stupid.

Could I have foreseen that my own creation, my monster, would want to ruin me? It was the ancient story of Oedipus, only I was both Mother and Father to the monster. He wanted to sleep with me and kill me both, which is how I felt about Alice Feiring. I’d created the script for my own snuff film where I was the star and the victim. Yet I believed I was doing good unleashing the monster on Spain, allowing him to roam the Spanish countryside dispensing my wisdom and my authority and my points.

Perhaps my first clue to his hatred of me should have been how profligate he was with my points, how he handed them out like pedophiles hand out promises of puppies. Everything was a 96 to this Sucklingized zombie, the stupidest Mencia and the most insipid Albarino. At first I found it cute, as gods find the behavior of mere mortals entertaining, but then my points, my scale that I had spent decades perfecting, became a laughingstock in the monster’s hands.

People saw the monster’s byline, his byline validated by my power and authority, and they began to laugh! To laugh! At me. At Parkenstein! Those meaningless numbers had actually become meaningless in the monster’s hands—something so many had tried to achieve with their own overblown scores and hollow, pathetic defenses of them, yet somehow only my loathsome Spanish dummy had succeeded in making an actual mockery of what had always been mockery. The monster had exposed my scale for what it was--yet another joke God has played on Man. I confess, now I find that joke mordantly funny.

And yet I loved my monster, his jowls reminded me of my beloved bulldog, so I didn’t do anything to stop him. He was my Creation, his existence without me as worthless as Republican rhetoric, and I was blind to the damage he was doing to me. And so I headed recklessly toward my downfall.

To be continued…

Posted by Ron Washam, HMW at 8:00 AM 17 comments

Labels: PARKENSTEIN

Thursday, January 5, 2012

PARKENSTEIN! Part the Last

Monkton, MD, 23 October 20__

My Dearest Sister,

I had a hard time believing all that Parkenstein told me. Only a madman could believe himself a God, and then believe he could pass along His Doctrine of Infallibility to monsters of his own making, thereby making each of them a sort of Pope, emissaries who speak the word of Parkenstein and have direct access to that almighty God and his insane system of Numbers—they were Parkenstein’s Howdy Deuteronomy. And, though he was clearly insane, I came to accept his story as truth. Parkenstein, his life, his career, his reputation, had been destroyed by a monster he had created with his own hands. It had the makings of a tragedy, a classic Geek tragedy. But I shall let Parkenstein finish his own tale.

The monster I had created [Parkenstein said to me] had come to hate me. He had learned my language, the language of countless adjectives, exaggeration, numbers, +’s, and disingenuousness, and he had learned it too well. His work on my behalf took on a crazed quality and I began to believe he was simply assigning numbers randomly, perhaps using a dartboard or by drawing them from a hat, which is what I do, only what the hell else can you do when you have to do it 150 times a day? I didn’t give the monster permission to do that. I was the last to recognize how ridiculous and meaningless his work was. I was just so proud of my creation, so amazed that I had given him a life, I just couldn’t believe that his numbers were that bizarre, that inflated. That was the first sign, I see now, that he wanted to destroy me.

Why did he want to destroy me? I don’t know the answer to that. But it must have been money. I had had ideas of creating a female monster to keep him company, but what female monster wants to marry a guy with a fish stick dick? And, besides, I’d already hired Karen MacNeil, so a female monster would have been redundant. No, it was the monster’s desire for money, which I assume came from that damned Suckling brain I’d used, that must have driven him to hate me. I paid him what he was worth—chump change. He was NOBODY. He was only someone because Parkenstein! said he was someone. They’d have laughed his verga de pescado out of Spain if it weren’t for me. They’d have made a blubber piñata out of him. But the monster believed in his own power, believed he had earned it. It was like I had created a twin.

The monster set out to gather money and ruin me at the same time. I admit now, the monster was a lot smarter than I’d thought. It had been a mistake to give him a brain—it’s not necessary for the job. It just seemed like the right thing to do. But it doesn’t take a brain to be a wine critic and assign numbers, it just takes balls. And I’d given him two salmon croquettes to go with the fish stick. That would have been plenty.

The monster began to accept money. This was strictly forbidden. No one I created could accept money in the line of duty. I scolded the monster, but he swore up and down he only accepted money for speaking engagements. I turned my wrath upon him and the monster broke down and cried (those John Boehner tear ducts were all I could scrounge), and swore to me the money was on the up and up. And it made sense. Who wouldn’t pay tens of thousands of dollars to sit and listen to a manufactured expert lecture and proclaim? Why wouldn’t the people who had the most to lose or gain by the monster’s numbers want to pony up big ticket prices to hear him babble? Why wouldn’t an entire Spanish region chip in to make sure that he got his facts straight?

But if it wasn’t evil, if it wasn’t corrupt, it certainly smelled of it. As his body parts had when I’d first assembled them. When the rabble got wind of the monster’s money-grubbing ways, they were incensed. I did what I always do in that situation—I ignored them. They revere me. I had nothing to fear. Sure, he was my monster, I’d loosed him on the world, but surely I wasn’t responsible for the appearance of impropriety he’d created. No one questions my integrity. NO ONE! Parkenstein is incorruptible and completely objective, like an NBA official.

And then the rabble surrounded my house. They had come for the monster. They wanted his head on a platter and his gigantic ass in a sling. I fought them off as best I could, but I knew that for the first time in my life, I was not the most powerful man in the world. And I knew that when the rabble, the scum, the ungrateful, number-munching cretins I had given my life to, for whom I had suffered endless nights of insobriety and gluttony, found out that I wasn’t the perfect, incorruptible, infallible God they’d believed me to be that I was doomed.

I should have given the ugly mob my monster. Instead, I defended him. It was foolish. But I loved him, I’d created him, I’d made him and he was Me, as surely as if I’d given birth to him, which would have hurt like a bastard. And with his actions, with his calculated acceptance of money, money he would never ever have been granted were it not for my imprimatur, he knocked me from my heavenly throne and I rejoined the rabble. My creation had ruined me.

Yes, I’m still here. I’m not the God I was, I have fewer and fewer Believers, only a sad collection of sycophantic Followers. But Parkenstein! still lives! And I have other monsters of my making roaming the Earth, assigning Numbers in my name, and I shall make my way to new worlds to conquer—the Far East! My minions and I will one day again ascend to the Heavens, wait and see, my friend. Wait and see…

R.I.P

And with that, dearest Sister, Parkenstein died. He lay sprawled on the newly wet pavement. It had begun to rain, and the air, for a brief moment, the moment I like to believe that his soul left that cetacean body, had the smell of Brettanomyces, a fitting tribute to Parkenstein’s end.

But, dearest Sister, his monsters still roam the Earth. For now. With his Life extinguished, how much longer can his creations live? Only so long as the foolish rabble continue to heed those most horrible of Parkenstein’s creations—the Numbers!

THE END, or is it?

Posted by Ron Washam, HMW at 7:00 AM 13 comments

Labels: PARKENSTEIN

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

Grilled snails with sea salt and rosemary at Casa Elias, Xinorlet (Alicante).

2012-01-06T16:06:00.001-05:00

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Grilled snails with sea salt and rosemary at Casa Elias, Xinorlet (Alicante).

Warning: Driving in Spain. Don't Get a Traffic Fine or You Will Get The Horn Twice!!

2012-01-06T15:15:00.002-05:00

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One of the famous Osborne bulls alongside a Spanish highway.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2010 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

Warning: Driving in Spain. Be very careful driving in Spain. There hidden cameras everywhere connected to radar. When you go over the speed limit, they catch your license plate on camera. On my trip with Michael Chiarello, we got hit with two 100 Euros fines, one as we were leaving the Basque Country and another around Albacete on our way to Madrid. Each of the fines was 100 Euros, but that is not all of it, Hertz charges 30 Euros to your credit card as a fee for the fine!!! But that is not all, there is also a 5.40 Euro VAT tax on the fee, so each fine was 100 Euros + 30 Euros + 5.40 Euros = 135.40 Euros or about $180 (with the exchange fees)! So the Spanish government fines you, then Hertz fines you. Oh, yeh, and there was the 40 Euro parking for parking on a Saturday afternoon in a spot where the hotel concierge said it was okay. And another 35.40 Euro Hertz fine for that on top of the parking fine. The total fines cost more that the rental car!! Can anyone else smell RIP-OFF?

Goya's La Maja Desnuda (The Naked Maja) at Los Gatos Tapas Bar, One of the Campiest Joints in Old Madrid

2012-01-04T22:17:00.007-05:00

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La Maja Desnuda, now with a padlock over a sensitive portion of her anatomy,
Los Gatos tapas bar, Madrid. Curro Romero is the bullfighter.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2010 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

The Naked Maja & Bullfighter Curro Romero and the Not So Naked Maja at Los Gatos Tapas Bar, one of old Madrid's campiest bars.

___________________________________________________________________________________

About Gerry Dawes

Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés.

Trailer for a proposed reality television series on
wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

Gerry Dawes's Visual Encyclopedia of Spanish Gastronomy & Wine: Cardos (Cardoons)

2012-01-04T20:46:00.005-05:00

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Cardos con semillas de granada, cardoons with pomegranate seeds, at El Crucero in Corella (Navarra).
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2010 / gerrydawes@aol.com

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

Pamplona Portraits from the Past: Alice Hall, Matt Carney, Derry Hall, Big Dave Pierce, Chris Humphreys, Joe Distler, Jimmy Hollander, Davey Crockett, Donnie Spicehandler, Charles Patrick Scanlan, Tim Hatfield, Noel Chandler, Jesse Graham, Ray Mouton & More

2012-01-03T23:34:00.004-05:00

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Matt Carney.

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Slide show: Portraits of San Fermín Personalities

(Double click on images for a larger view of the slides.)

Excerpt from Homage to Iberia (Chapter One): My Arrival in Spain: 42 Years Ago, on January 2, 1968

2012-01-02T15:58:00.019-05:00

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Bullring, El Puerto de Santa María.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

On January 2, 1968, not long after daylight, our military plane banked near El Puerto de Santa María and I got my first glimpse of Spain: whitewashed buildings surrounded by palm trees in a sea of stubby vines surrounded by stark white soil, for the base at Rota lay near the Sherry vineyards between Jerez de la Frontera and Sanlúcar de Barrameda. As the plane circled before landing, I could not help noticing the circular enclosures which I would learn were bullrings, the big one at El Puerto de Santa María and smaller ones where I would one day find first hand that young fighting cows are tested for bravery. Spain was already beginning to fascinate me and I had not even touched the ground.

The plane landed, physically in Spain, but in an American enclave, where I would stay for the next week, chomping at the bit to discover my first foreign country. New arrivals were not allowed off the base until they had attended the don’t-drink-the-water, don’t-eat-the-food, don’t-get-in-fights-with-the-natives, don’t- molest-the-señoritas lecture, which was held once a week. For our group, the indoctrination lecture would not to be held for nearly a week.

All I saw of Spain during my first week in Rota were the glimpses I got on the daily bus rides to my work assignment at a large white security building, surrounded by a huge antennae field - - derisively known to the enlisted men as the “hum locker” because of the constant humming sound the antennaes made - - where Navy linguists in French, Arabic, and Russian clandestinely eavesdropped on radio conversations from around the Mediterranean.

From the perimeter road, across the strands of barbed wire that encircled the base, I saw men plodding along on burros past scrappy-looking farms with cottages, that, in those days, still had thatched roofs and in whose sparse environs grew cactus and palm trees. I saw little of the of the greenery and trees that I knew from my native Midwest; this was more like parts of California, perhaps even more barren. Still, those few glimpses were tantalizing and exotic.

Burros, once common in Spain, now very rare.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

Finally, along with other new arrivals, we were given the indoctrination lecture and allowed off the base. I went to downtown Rota with a fellow sailor for my first meal in Spain: Spaghetti with meat sauce, served in an “American” bar, where Spanish and foreign girls, very few of whom were actually prostitutes, tried to keep lonesome young men engaged in conversation, thus keeping the wheels hot on the trucks that delivered San Miguel beer to the bars of Rota. The latest American rock music blared from a jukebox, continually reminding my compatriots of the girls they had left behind, perpetuating their homesickness and underlining their determination to get out of “Mother Nav” and away from Spain, whose people some of them contemptuously referred to as “Moes,” a name given local Spaniards by sailors who had been transferred to Rota from Kenitra, Morocco.

La Gitana Manzanilla, a Sherry made in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, about 10 miles northwest of Rota.
Sanlúcar de Barrameda has long been one of my favorite towns in Spain.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

I knew men who spent two years at Rota and never got more than a few kilometers from the base. Once I lured one of them as far away as Cádiz, that wonderful, exotic seaport city across the bay from Rota, to see the sights, but he became so uncomfortable after a couple of hours, that he demanded we return to the Rota to drink in the American bars.

I too joined the daily post-shift migration to the bars of Rota, drinking my share of drinks, playing my share of pool, telling my share of jokes, and trying, like hundreds of other enlisted men and officers, to woo the too many times wooed, often hardened, young women who served drinks. But, gnawing away at my insides was the thought that Spain was my chance to see Europe, maybe my only chance, before returning to small-town Illinois, where, with the help of the GI Bill, I would resume pursuit of my teacher’s degree at Southern Illinois University.

But, in addition to hanging out in the bars, I continued reading about Spain, and like many others before and since, became enamored of Ernest Hemingway’s books, especially the ones set in Spain, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises, especially the later, which drew on the experiences of the Paris-based Lost Generation. Influenced by images of Hemingway writing in cafés, I would sometimes sit for hours in a beach front bar in Rota and scribble in a notebook, my imitation prose flow lubricated by sherry or beer.

Sunset, Bay of Cádiz.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

Photography: All photos on this blog were taken with Canon cameras, these lenses and equipment (click on this link to see images of my photo gear).

2011-12-31T18:08:00.000-05:00

Gerry Dawes's Visual Encyclopedia of Spanish Gastronomy & Wine

2011-12-31T14:47:00.014-05:00

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(A work in progress with frequent new additions and updates.)

Alcachofas con jamón Ibérico.
Copyright Gerry Dawes 2010 / gerrydawes@aol.com

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

The Distancing Begins: Jancis Robinson's Read on Pancho Campo MW, "the (now ex) Spanish specialist wine reviewer" (Jay Miller) and "the supposed beacon of probity Robert Parker" in her review of 2011

2011-12-31T14:05:00.003-05:00

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The Distancing Begins

Jancis Robinson interviews Portuguese winemaker Dierk Von Di Niepoort
at the WineCreator conference in Ronda, 2008.

Jancis Robinson, who supported Pancho Campo as an MW candidate, gives her read on Pancho Campo MW, Jay Miller*, Robert Parker and WineFuture Hong Kong in her review of the year:

"The wine topic of the year on blogs and online fora, at least among the wine writers who dominate them, has been wine writer ethics. Acres of cyberspace have been devoted to the sometimes jaw-dropping conduct of Spain's first Master of Wine and event organiser Pancho Campo.

Allegations have been made that Campo asked for sums from producer associations for access to the (now ex) Spanish specialist wine reviewer* for America's leading wine writer and supposed beacon of probity Robert Parker. The matter is now being investigated and Campo denies any wrongdoing.

His last major event was WineFuture, an ambitious international wine conference in Hong Kong at which the three tastings, for 1,000 tasters, were led by me, Parker and Campo. In retrospect it does not look good that much of Campo's tasting was taken up with films of his arrival at various wineries in a Ferrari."**-- jancisrobinson.com©2011

*Is Jay Miller getting dropped down the memory hole here? He is not even mentioned by name in the article, just Robert Parker, his boss.

**Italics and underlining by GD.

__________________________________________________________________________________

About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain.

Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. "

Pilot for a proposed reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

(Filmed in Valencia and Alicante.)

Adventures in Spanish Taste: Insider's Food, Wine, Cultural and Photographic Travel in Spain

The Traveling Gastronomer: A Celebration of Food, Wine, Life, Photography & Quixotic Musings

The Spanish Artisan Wine Group

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

Why corks are popping once more - - The Guardian

2011-12-30T10:16:00.009-05:00

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The Spanish Artisan Wine Group

Gerry Dawes Selections

Why Cork Stoppers in Bottles of Our
Spanish Artisan Wine Group Wines Matter

(Click on the line above, includes a slide show on cork.)

* * * * *

Adventures in Spanish Taste: Insider's Food, Wine, Cultural and Photographic Travel in Spain

Amorim Natural Corks

2011-12-30T00:10:00.002-05:00

Amorim Natural Corks

High Alcohol: Harold McGee

2011-12-30T00:10:00.000-05:00

High Alcohol: Harold McGee

Photo: Chef Michael Chiarello and Executive Chef Ryan Mcilwaith of Bottega Napa Valley with Jordi Mas (Mas Gourmets de L'Embotits) at Quim de la Boquería in Barcelona

2011-12-27T10:50:00.004-05:00

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Jordi Mas (Mas Gourmets de L'Embotit), Chef-owner of Napa Valley's Bottega restaurant and Food Network Next Top Chef personality Michael Chiarello and Bottega Executive Chef Ryan Mcilwaith at Quim de la Boquería in Barcelona. Oct. 11, 2011.

Chiarello and Mcilwaith were on a 4,000 km. gastronomic research trip with me across Spain. Jordi Mas co-authored the book Boquería Gourmand with Oscar Uribe, President of La Boquería (Mercat de San Josep) in Barcelona. I wrote the foreword for the English version of the book (see below.)

English Version of Boquería Gourmand (Published in October by Viena Edicions), a New Book about Barcelona's Fabulous La Boquería Market

_______________________________________________________________________________
About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain.

Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés, the 2011 James Beard Foundation Outstanding Chef

Trailer for a proposed television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com.

Jim Budd on Jim's Loire "Pancho Campo MW: investigation or witch hunt?" Plus Robert Parker's "This blogger. . ." and Links to Other Stories in The Ongoing The Pancho Campo-Jay Miller-Robert M. Parker, Jr. The Wine Advocate Controversy

2011-12-27T10:12:00.012-05:00

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Pancho Campo MW: investigation or witch hunt? by Jim Budd

Pancho Campo MW – Vinos de Madrid: a response from Robert Parker

Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukkah from Gerry Dawes & Kay Balun.

2011-12-25T10:18:00.001-05:00

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Kay Balun and the Bear at Salvador Dalí's house, Port Lligat (Girona), Catalunya. December 2010.

Gerry Dawes & Kay Balun in Barcelona's famous Boquería market toasting with cava (Catalan sparkling wine) a small group that Gerry was leading around Spain. Cava gets breakfast off to a good start!

Photo by Tyler Schwartz.

The Chestnut Seller, Burgos, Castilla y León.

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com.

Photo Op: Chef Michael Chiarello on One of My Customized Tours of Spain.

2011-12-24T12:27:00.013-05:00

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On a private customized tour of Spain with Gerry Dawes.
Food Network Next Iron Chef contestant Michael Chiarello,
Chef-owner of Bottega (Napa Valley), Pasterlería Oyarzun, San Sebastián.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

In addition to Michael Chiarello and his Executive Chef Ryan Mcilwaith, the following food personalities have been on customized wine and food tours with me to Spain:

Thomas Keller
Ally Barker
Michael Lomonaco
Terrance Brennan (twice)
Mark Miller (five times)
Mark Kiffin
John Gottfried
Michael Whiteman

Chefs and food personalities whom I have accompanied on shorter excursions such as mini tapas hopping tours, luncheons and dinners in Madrid, Barcelona, San Sebastián, Valencia, Alicante, etc.:

Norman Van Aken
Stephen Kalt
Rick Moonen
David Burke
Michael Ginor
Michael & Ariane Batterberry
Tim and Nina Zagat
Jeffrey Steingarten
Greg Grossman
Ruth Reichl
Cindy Pawlcyn
Charlie Trotter
Tetsuya Wakuda
Drew Nieporent
John Sconzo
Karen Page
Andrew Dornenburg
Michael Weiss
Greg Drescher
Jimmy Schmidt
Peter Kump
Maria Guarneschelli
Antoinette Bruno

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

________________________________________________________________________________

Gerry Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés.

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts.

Trailer for a proposed reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

The UK "Drinks Business" Top Ten Stories of 2011; The Pancho Campo-Jay Miller-Robert Parker Wine Advocate Controversy & the Masters of Wine Institute's Investigation into Campo's Activities in Spain is Number Eight

2011-12-23T09:37:00.008-05:00

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Top 10 drinks stories of 2011

The Drinks Business

As the year draws to a close, a scandal currently holds the wine industry in thrall.

The Institute of Masters of Wine (IMW) announced in December that it was opening an investigation into the conduct of Pancho Campo MW following allegations the president and founder of The Wine Academy of Spain charged Spanish wineries up to €40,000 for a visit from Jay Miller of The Wine Advocate.

Announcing the formal investigation, an IMW statement said: “Membership of the Institute and the right to use the title Master of Wine is reserved for those individuals who have passed all aspects of the Masters of Wine Examination, agreed to abide by the Institute’s formal Code of Conduct and who remain members in good standing.

“In the event that a breach of the Code is proven, a range of sanctions is available to it.

“Having received a formal complaint into Pancho Campo MW’s alleged conduct, the Institute of Masters of Wine has opened an investigation.”

Campo had already moved swiftly to deny any wrongdoing, issuing a statement through The Wine Academy of Spain which said: “The Wine Academy of Spain never requested from any wineries monies for the visits of Jay Miller or for tasting their wines.

“All the expenses for Jay Miller to travel to Spanish wine regions to taste and review wines were covered by The Wine Advocate, including his transportation, accommodation, meals and any other related expenses,” the statement continued.

According to Campo, the only occasion when fees had been charged were for “the organisation, setup and management of events that included seminars, conferences, masterclasses and guided tastings, which were open to the public,” but that “None of these fees were ever paid to The Wine Advocate.”

Miller has since resigned from The Wine Advocate, but denied his stepping down had anything to do with the Spain debacle. “Some may believe my stepping down is in response to my critics, nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.

“I have never accepted (or request) fees for visiting wine regions or wineries.”

The wine world will wait with baited breath for the outcome of the IMW enquiry in the new year.

Related posts on:

Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

Photo of the Day: Fishmonger at Pontevedra Municipal market, Galicia.

2011-12-22T11:09:00.002-05:00

Fishmonger at Pontevedra Municipal market, Galicia.

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Gerry Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés.
". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009.

Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine, Photographic & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

Photo of the Day: Pan Gallego, Galician Bread

2011-12-21T13:22:00.000-05:00

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Pan galego, Galician bread at the Santiago de Compostela market.

(Note: All photographs on this blog are available for purchase. For publication rights, contact me at my e-mail address below the photograph.)

Spain's giant Osborne bull heads for Dallas: Demand for Spanish roadside feature in US and Denmark, but Not Without a Little Revisionist Politically Correct Bullshit from Osborne's Spokesman.

2011-12-21T12:03:00.000-05:00

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Spain's giant Osborne bull heads for Dallas: Demand for Spanish roadside feature in US and Denmark.

An article in Britain's The Guardian by Giles Tremlett

(Giles Tremlett Madrid guardian.co.uk) Wednesday 14 December 2011

"It is one of most memorable sights in Spain, a huge black bull with horns and prominent cojones that sits on hilltops and roadsides watching over the passing traffic. . .

(Osborne spokesman) Llanza says the bulls are not meant to represent the bullfight. "These are not fighting bulls, they are roadside bulls – large pieces of metal, painted black and with very long lifespans," he said." -- From Tremlett's article in The Guardian.

Yes, the Osborne bulls alongside Spanish roads (over 500 of them) do have big cojones, but it is BULLSHIT to say that they "are not fighting bulls," which has to be some kind of PC revisionist history. The Osbornes, who made their fortune in Sherry and now own other wineries such as La Rioja's Montecillo, plus the Sánchez Caravajal Cinco Jotas jamón Ibérico brand and chain of Cinco Jotas ham-themed restaurants and tapas bars, has long had fighting bull ranches in the Osborne family.

These ubiquitous emblems of Spain that were first installed along Spain's highways as Osborne Veterano sherry brandy advertisements, are indeed modeled on the Spanish fighting bull.

Indeed, the magnificent 19th-century bullring in El Puerto de Santa María, the atmospheric Andalucian Guadalete river port and Bay of Cádiz town where Osborne's historic sherry bodegas are located was built in 1880 by a group headed by D. Tomás Osborne Böhl de Faber. In front of the bullring stands an excellent statue of a fighting bull, done by the late Spanish sculptor Antonio Navarro Santafé, the same sculptor who did the famous Oso y el Madroño (the Bear and the Strawberry Tree monument [the symbol of Madrid] that stands in Madrid's Puerta del Sol.

Another pair of Navarro Santafé modeled fighting bull sculptures are installed in front of one of Osborne's bodegas at the entrance from the road coming in from Jerez de la Frontera.

The brief opening shot in the video below shows one of the Osborne bulls along the highway.

Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

Chef Jordi Cruz, One of the Fastest Rising Stars of the Post elBulli Epoque Gets a Second Michelin Star at ABaC in Barcelona.

2011-12-20T19:49:00.000-05:00

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Persistence of Memory* (Salvador Dalí) Five-Watch Rating

Jordi Cruz is one of my favorite post elBulli-era chefs. I have predicted that he will get a third-star. After less, than two years at ABaC, he just received his second. !!Enhorabuena!!

ABaC Barcelona (From my article in Departures, May 2011)

Want to catch a true rising star in the Spanish food firmament, one that many predict will soon be awarded three Michelin stars? Jordi Cruz first cooked at the restaurant L’Estany Clar in the village of Berga, north of Barcelona, where at the age of 26 he became the youngest chef in Spain to receive a Michelin star. He then moved further into the Catalan hinterlands, to Món St. Benet, near Manresa, where he cooked at L’Angle, the restaurant attached to Ferran Adrià’s food research center Fundació Alícia. Anyone who ate there immediately recognized his rare talent. Cruz is now lighting up the sophisticated Barcelona culinary sky at the glittering new ABaC Restaurant & Hotel, which opened in 2008. Dishes might include smoked salmon with cauliflower purée served under a smoke-filled cloche, or an ethereal mushroom-and-truffle focaccio accompanied by a little tumbler of champignon bisque with hazelnut foam. Not to be missed is Cruz’s extraordinary extraterrestrial gin-tonic, made with cucumber and a dollop of lemon sorbet. Cruz is not just creative; his food is as delicious as that of any Spanish modernista cuisine chef today. Dinner, $215. 1 Avenida Tibidabo, Barcelona; 34-933/196-600.

Where to Stay: The restaurant is located within the sleek new ABaC Hotel (rooms, from $460), whose owners also have two others places in Barcelona, the Hotel Cram (rooms, from $250; 54 Aribau; 34-932/167-700) downtown—home to Michelin-starred restaurant Gaig)—and the new Hotel Mirror (rooms, from $250; 255 Córcega; 34-932/028-686) in the Eixample district, whose restaurant, The Mirror, just hired two-star chef Paco Pérez. -- Gerry Dawes

View the Current Issue

San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010, A Basque Trilogy: Kaia, Elkano and Etxebarri

2011-12-18T18:56:00.009-05:00

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Persistence of Memory* (Salvador Dalí) Five-Watch Rating

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A Basque Trilogy

by Gerry Dawes

(Published in Food Arts, March 2010)

Gerry Dawes
Posted: March 1, 2011

I was on another multi-tasking mission to Spain last November, and high on my list was attending the San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010 chefs conference, where several New York City food folk—Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, David Bouley, Drew Nieporent, Anthony Bourdain, Colman Andrews, David Chang, and Wylie Dufresne—would be appearing. Especially appealing was the prospect of seeing what the conference organizer, Grup GSR, run by the Catalan dynamo Roser Torras, had up its sleeves for the annual event.

Nieporent and I planned to meet in Bilbao Saturday evening, November 20, the night before we were due at San Sebastián Gastronomika. I was to get us a dinner reservation at the legendary asa dor (grill-house) Etxebarri, southeast of Bilbao. I called Victor Arguinzoniz, the now-renowned owner/grillmeister of Etxebarri, called by some the best restaurant in northern Spain, and heard, “Sorry, but I don’t have a single seat”—not even for Nieporent, the famoso restaurateur. My fallback was Elkano, which has been called the best fish restaurant in the world, located in the magical fishing village of Getaria, near San Sebastián. “Elkano is closed for vacation,” a voice message said. Fallback position numero dos was Kaia, also in Getaria and also famous for whole wild grilled turbot.

Whole rodaballo (turbot) grilling at Kaia, Getaria.

At Kaia, we had house-cured anchoas (anchovies) and excellent txangurro (a classic Basque dish of centollo, or spider crabmeat, sautéed with leeks and garlic, spiked with brandy, put back in the shell and browned under a broiler). Our main course was whole wild rodaballo (turbot) grilled over wood coals and filleted at the table, a glorious dish for which Getaria is justly famous. We accompanied the anchoas and txangurro with Getariako Txakolina, Getaria’s slightly pétillant “green wine,” and with the rodaballo we had a still impeccable Monte Real Reserva 1970 at a laughably reasonable price. After dinner, Nieporent’s driver appeared and whisked him off to San Sebastián. Because my conference lodgings were unavailable until the next day, I had booked a room in Getaria at the charming Pension Getariano, just across the street from Elkano restaurant.

Sunday evening, after a press conference featuring a panel of Basque star chefs—Juan Mari Arzak, Pedro Subijana, Martín Berasategui, Andoni Aduriz, and Hilario Arbelaitz—16 emerging Basque country talents prepared some wonderful degustaciòn plates for a reception. I saw Boulud and Brazilian journalist Alexandra Forbes watching as chef Ramón Piñeiro from the Frank Gehry–designed Marqués de Riscal hotel restaurant in La Rioja Alavesa put the finishing touches on his soufflé of Idiazabal cheese with organic olive oil, herbs, and citrus. Huevo frito con patatas, a still liquid egg yolk wrapped in thin strips of potato, then flash-fried, from chef Beñat Ormaetxea of Jauregibarria was perhaps the evening’s top mouthful.

Daniel Boulud and Alexandra Forbes watch Ramón Piñiero of Marques de Riscal

restaurant put the finishing touches on his Souffle of Idiazabal cheese.

San Sebastián Gastronomika took place during Thanksgiving week, with the contingent from New York appearing for their big day on Tuesday, November 23. Bouley, Boulud, Bourdain, Chang, Dufresne, and Nieporent all played to large appreciative audiences. Andrews was there for the presentation of his book, Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food. Also drawing large followings were the contingent of Spanish superstar chefs: Ferran Adrià, Joan Roca, Carme Ruscalleda, and Christian Escribà from Catalonia; San Sebastián home-grown estrellas such as Arzak, Subijana, Berasategui, Aduriz, and Arbelaitz (12 Michelin stars in total); Italian chef Massimo Bottura (Osteria Francescana, Modena); and Australian Neil Perry (Rockpool Bar & Grill, Melbourne). A conference highlight was the homenaje (homage) by all his fellow Basque chefs to Spanish television’s Karlos Arguiñano, who is probably more famous here than Adrià.

Anthony Bourdain presenting at San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010.

Interwoven between the daily presentations was the star-studded scene at the Joselito Ibérico stand, where Spain’s ham king, José Gómez, and his crew of ham slicers served some of the world’s best air-cured hams, chorizo, lomo (loin), and salchichón (salami) trucked over from his aging plant in Guijuelo (Salamanca). Gómez likes to serve top Spanish red wines and French Champagne with his Ibérico pig products. It was not unusual to see the likes of Keller, Boulud, Adriá, and Arzak sitting together, toasting with flutes of bubbly while munching on Joselito’s stellar jamón Ibérico de bellota—air-cured hams from the acorn-fattened pata negra (black foot) breed of Iberian hogs.

José Gómez, Joselito the Jamón king at San Sebastián Gastronomika.

To honor the New York presenters, Christian Escribà, the legendary Barcelona pastelero-chocolatero (pastry and chocolates) maestro, rolled on stage his large chocolate and marzipan creation of the New York City skyline with marzipan figures of the New Yorkers with their initials on their chef’s jackets. Andrews’ figure held a tiny copy of his book Ferran. “I really felt special, humbled, and honored to have Escribà’s amazing, extraordinarily meticulous New York piece presented to us,” Keller said.

Christian Escribà at San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2010. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

New York contingent posing with Christian Escribà's sensational pastry-and-chocolate creation of New York, New York at San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010. Boulud, Nieporent, Dufresne, Andrews, Chang, Keller & Bourdain. Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2010. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

Boulud cooked his famous foie gras/short rib/beef burgers on stage and passed out at least 200 portions to an appreciative audience in the VIP section of the 1,800 seat Kursaal Auditorium. Keller’s cooking demonstration was “certainly a departure. Everybody at San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010 was doing demonstrations based on formulas and techniques,” he said. “Rather than trying to intellectualize or formulate something, my Per Se sous chef David Breeden and I went to La Bretxa market in the old quarter, and from ingredients available that morning, we just spontaneously prepared some beautiful dishes.” Beautiful indeed: citrus-cured mackerel with cipollini and compressed sour apples; uni with avocado, orange suprêmes, and arugula; Idiazabal with artichokes cooked sous-vide with compressed Paris mushrooms and watercress.

Three-star Michelin Chefs Juan Mari Arzak & Thomas Keller at San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010.
I first took Thomas Keller to Arzak in 1990, before he opened The French Laundry.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2010. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

As the conference broke for lunch, Arzak hailed me: “Gerry Adams! [that’s what he calls me], you have a rental car, no? I got a reservation at Etxebarri!” (See Departures profile of Etxebarri.) I jumped at the chance to have lunch there. It was after 3:30 when I pulled into Etxebarri’s parking lot in the Basque hamlet of Axpe. I hoped to photograph Arguinzoniz working at his specially designed grills, but I was informed by the woman running Etxebarri’s dining room that he didn’t want the distraction of photographers during service. Arguinzoniz’s style of grilling is a precise discipline that requires his full attention, especially when he performs such miracles as smoking caviar in a self-designed grill pan with microscopically fine mesh laser-bored openings that allow smoke to come through while holding in moisture.

Victor Arguinzoniz at the grills he designed himself at Etxebarri.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2010. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

I opted for the shorter tasting menu: smoked house-made mozzarella perched on a single slice of eggplant; a perfect house-cured and seasoned anchoa on a thin strip of grilled bread soaked with olive oil; exquisite pieces of nécora crab grilled in the shell; a pair each of lightly grilled, rosy pink gambas de Palamós (highly prized shrimp from the Costa Brava); a pair of lightly smoky grilled oysters with oyster liquor espuma (foam), perched on a slice of pickled eggplant; and grilled becada (woodcock) with its detached head and beak presiding over an assortment of grilled fall vegetables, a chestnut, and carrot puree. My only caveat was the repetition of smoke in every dish.

The meal at Etxebarri was yet another Spanish Basque triumph of exceptional product sourcing married to simple, but exceptionally refined, techniques, which, in the best places, trumps cocina de vanguardia sleights-of-hand nearly every time. In the hands of experienced maestros at Extebarri, Elkano, and Kaia, such dishes, because of their exquisite simplicity and pure flavors, remain etched in memory long after many of the cocina de vanguardia pyrotechnics evaporate like an espuma in the dessert. Perhaps that’s why so many Spanish vanguardia chefs have opened modernized traditional tapas bars in the past few years.

Fortunately, dinners begin late in Spain, which allowed a couple of hours after Etxebarri before dinner at Elkano (click to see Departures profile on Elkano, the third gastronomic thoroughbred in my trifecta. I arrived to find Elkano’s father-and-son owners, Pedro and Aitor Arregui, and their longtime grill chef, Luis Mari Manterola, sweating “la gota gorda” (the big drop) at the prospects of serving 130 people, including the culinary heavyweights attending the conference.

Luís Mari Manterola grilling turbot at Elkano. San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2010. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

From previous meals at Elkano, I had no doubts that they would impress even this crowd. And they did, serving us superb almejas (clams); a tartare of chipirón (small squid) with sea urchin and trails of chipirón ink sauce (a Getaria speciality); two preparations of kokotxas (hake glands), one grilled, the other battered and deep-fried, both ethereal; small samplings of fat sea-tasting percebes (goose barnacles); wood charcoal grilled langosta (lobster); and whole wild rodaballo (turbot) filleted at the table, all accompanied by light, refreshing small producer Txakolis from Getaria. We finished by dipping into whole, wonderfully oozing Torta del Casar sheep’s milk cheeses from Extremadura and texturas de manzana reineta a la parrilla, a sensational grilled apple dessert.

I sat with Nieporent, who agreed that Elkano was indeed the best fish restaurant in the world. Boulud took the microphone at the end of the meal and reaffirmed that appraisal. Chang was impressed: “The last thing I wanted to do was eat again, but I am so glad I went. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had.”

Wylie Dufresne and David Chang at the Elkano dinner. San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010.
Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2010. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

________________________________________________________________________________

About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés.

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009.

Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Una Pura Fábula ¡Bienvenido, Mister Parquet*!: (in Spanish) A Humorous Look Back

2011-12-18T12:53:00.001-05:00

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¡Bienvenido, Mister Parquet*!

(In Spanish.)

This parody from 2009 by Ernesto Venerables has some striking similarities

to the Pancho Campo-Jay Miller-Robert M. Parker, Jr. Troika controversy of 2011.

La Rioja: R. López de Heredia, The Wines of Yesterday

2011-12-17T13:37:00.002-05:00

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Literary Inspiration for A Traveller in Wines

"Here," cried Don Quixote, "here, brother Sancho Panza, we shall be able to dip our hands up to the elbows, in what is called adventure. . ." – Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes

"People talk of the glorious dreams of opium-smokers, the frenzied exhilaration that hashish can give, but I, who have studied both, assure you that neither can for a moment compare with the delirious joy of fifty or sixty Spaniards applauding a dancer in the upper room of a café in Seville!" – From Paris to Cádiz, Alexandre Dumas pere

"Of one thing the reader may be assured, – that dear will be to him, as is now to us, the remembrance of those wild and weary rides through tawny Spain. . ." – Gatherings From Spain, Richard Ford.

"The traveller in wines, finding these topics a little beyond his comprehension, remarked loudly that Sénécal was forgetting a lot of scandals." – Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert, whose work was greatly influenced by Cervantes's Don Quixote.

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López de Heredia, The Wines of Yesterday

From A Traveller in Wines
(A work-in-progress.)
by Gerry Dawes

(Also see: Tom Perry, Inside Rioja. Interview with Gerry Dawes:

“The 1947 Bosconia is the best red wine I have ever drunk.”)

La Rioja: The Wines of Yesterday, the 19th Century bodega of R. López de Heredia
in Haro, the wine capital of La Rioja Alta.
Photo by Gerry Dawes, copyright 2008 / gerrydawes@aol.com

R. López de Heredia Slideshow

Double click on the slide show, then when the Google album comes up,
click on slideshow link to the right and go to a full screen view.

During the 1970s when I lived in southern Spain, the northern wine district of Rioja came to represent an oasis to me during the hot, rainless summers of Andalucia, my spiritual home. By early July, the heat settles in over a large portion of Spain. The sun bears down relentlessly, especially in the Mediterranean portions of the country, driving millions of Spaniards to the beaches and cool mountain resorts. Coinciding with this time of year was our annual, much anticipated trek to Pamplona, where Hemingway's inveterate lost souls come from all over the world to see the sun rise on yet another Fiesta de San Fermín, which he immortalized in The Sun Also Rises. Since my former wife Diana and I counted ourselves among the admirers of the venerable Don Ernesto's fiesta, we too joined the migration each year.

We always set out at least a week before the commencement of festivities at Pamplona, so we could explore the Spanish countryside along the way. On one of these trips, we discovered the Rioja and it became our favorite place to pass some quiet time before surrendering to the wild, week-long festivities at Pamplona, where peace, tranquillity, and sleep are rare commodities and not even particularly desirable ones at that. We looked forward to the Rioja country, where we could taste fine wines in cool bodegas, sample superb country cuisine, and enjoy the scenery, history, and milder climate of this high mountain valley.

These were the days long before modern super highways were built across Spain and before most cars, including our magnificent Volkswagen sedan, Rocinante, had air-conditioning, so to avoid some of the scorching road heat of summertime Spain, in late afternoon we would leave Mijas, our pueblo on a mountain overlooking the Costa del Sol. We would drive into the wee hours of morning to escape the steady daytime flow of North African workers and their families, who once released on their month-long holiday from Northern European factories, maniacally pushed their lumbering, overloaded cars and vans down through Spain, hell-bent on reaching the beaches and homeward-bound ferries of the southern coast. Apart from diminishing our chances of being maimed by a Peugeot or a Mercedes van, the night offered some relief from being stuck behind the long queues of laboring Spanish trucks belching noxious black exhaust.

After stopping for a brief sleep at a Valdepeñas pensión, we would drive on through Madrid in the early morning hours to reach the ancient Castilian capital of Burgos–the city of El Cid–by midday. There we headed East towards the Rioja. In less than an hour, as the road climbed, the vegetation became increasingly verdant, the air fresher and cooler. The greener landscape, now showing some vineyards, soothes the soul as well as the body as the heavy layers of oppressive road heat peel away. The promise of a thundershower bringing the cool, night breezes of the Rioja would soon put the dust of the southern summer behind us.

We had arranged for two old friends, Alice Hall, the dowager empress of American bullfight aficionados of Milledgeville, Georgia and Carolyn Moyer of Davis, California to join us in a tour of the Rioja on our way to Pamplona. On this occasion, in 1973, we had written the firm of R. López de Heredia at Haro, the wine capital of La Rioja Alta, letting them know that we again wished to visit their bodega. The reply had come in the charming, graceful Spanish of a more genteel age. It went something like, "...We cannot tell you what joy the news of your imminent visit has produced in our bodega. It would be our great pleasure to receive you."
By 10:00 on the morning of our visit, after a breakfast of rolls and café con leche, the four of us were down in the bodegas of R. López de Heredia for our "second breakfast" - - a wine tasting. Here, in surroundings as incredible as any I have known in the world of wine, Sr. Anastasio Gútierrez Angulo, the firm's export manager, let us taste some of his twenty-year old reservas–wines made in the style of a different era–wines of yesterday.

The 19th Century bodega of R. López de Heredia

in Haro, the wine capital of La Rioja Alta.

The bodega had all the trappings of a nineteenth-century operation patterned on the chais of Bordeaux (and in 2008, still does). The winery workers even wear blue coveralls as many of the staff at French chateaux still do. In time-honored fashion, barrels are still crafted in the winery's own cooperage. We saw workers cracking eggs from the firm's chicken farm to get fresh egg whites for fining the wines. Other employees laboriously filled bottles with reserva wines by hand and corked them with a hand-operated corking device.

The cooperage at the 19th Century bodega (f. 1877) of R. López de Heredia.
Photo by Gerry Dawes, copyright 2008 / gerrydawes@aol.com

Anastasio led us through a man-made maze of cool, barrel-filled limestone caves to the deepest part of the bodega - the room known at R. Lopez de Heredia as the cementerio - the cemetery. The cementerio is the resting place of the old vintage reservas dating from the founding of the firm in 1877. This cellar gets its name from the storage bins lining its walls, which very much resemble the burial niches in the Roman-plan cemeteries of Spain. Bin after bin is filled with dusty bottles from the greatest vintages of the past. At one end of the room is a large round wooden table whose centerpiece is a huge, gnarled, cobweb-covered old grapevine surrounded by bottles of wine.

Barrel being rolled to another location at the 19th Century bodega (f. 1877) of R. López de Heredia.

Our host, Anastasio, had selected two gran reservas from the fine 1954 vintage for us to taste. The first was Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva, a lovely, elegant Bordeaux-style wine of breed and complexity. The second wine was a more intense, dark ruby wine in a burgundy bottle, Viña Bosconia Gran Reserva, which was showing signs of evolving into a big, warm, rich wine - aterciopelado (velvety), as the Spaniards call it. The Viña Bosconia had a particularly beautiful nose, one which reminded me of a wonderful phrase that Michael Wigram, a wealthy Englishman who lives in Madrid and is and one of the world’s foremost bullfight aficionados, had used to describe another 1954 reserva at a luncheon during the Feria de Sevilla in 1973, "Gets a nice bloom on it after nineteen years, don't you think?"

These wines did indeed have "a nice bloom" on them. They were wines to be enjoyed, not merely tasted and spit on the floor of the bodega, so we sipped them while Anastasio gave us the most charming description of Rioja winemaking I have ever heard. First he described the normal processes of vinification, barrel aging, bottling, and so forth for the bodega's "bread and butter" - the table wines made to sell in the fourth, fifth, and sixth years after the vintage. Then, when he came to the subject of gran reservas, the classic Rioja reservas from exceptional vintages, he began to speak of the wine as a living thing. In this place called the cemetery, he brought his wines to life. Speaking softly, but with passion in his beautifully enunciated Castilian Spanish, he described the wine's "education."

"You see," he began, "in the beginning, a gran reserva is like a young man. Here in the bodega, he gets a proper `education,' then is bottled and becomes a young caballero. At about 25 years he reaches the peak of his youth, then he mellows out to about the age of, say, 35-40, when he gradually begins to tail off. However, some of these fellows do well even after fifty. A few years ago the owners allowed three bottles of the 1914s to be opened for a celebration. The second bottle was in fine condition."

It would be a day to remember - Anastasio's wonderful analogy and his beautiful wines were just the beginning. We were four good friends glowing with wine and in the mood for fiesta. At Merendero Toni in San Vicente de la Sonsierra, we lingered over one of those wonderful Spanish lunches: a simple salad of garden-ripened tomatoes, lettuce, and onions at the peak of their flavor, succulent baby lamb chops al sarmiento (grilled over grapevine prunings), crisp fried potatoes, and lots of vino tinto de la Rioja.

After lunch, with a tape playing jotas, the folk songs of Navarra, La Rioja and Aragón, we took the breathtaking drive up to the Balcon de la Rioja for splendid views of the entire Rioja valley. Diana and Alice, euphoric from the wine, the food, and the splendor of the day, danced the jota on the mountain as a Spanish family stared incredulously at two foreigners–Alice a septuagenarian at that–performing the lively regional dance of northern Spain in their own private fiesta.

Over the years, I drank many bottles of López de Heredia’s wines including the 1942 Viña Bosconia and 1947 Viña Bosconia, which at the time I thought were two of the greatest red wine I had ever drunk. I also visited López de Heredia several times and became friends with Anastasio Gútierrez and Pepe Osses, who succeeded him.

One day Anastasio and I were touring the bodega. We had just come out of the firm’s picturesque cooper’s shop, which has always reminded me of Diego Velasquez’s Vulcan’s Forge in the Prado. Suddenly, there in front of us was an old man in a wheelchair. He wore a black beret, wore a sweater and had a terribly swollen, bare foot that looked like a encrusted stump.

“¿Ya sabes quien es (you know who this is)?” Anastasio asked me. It was Don Rafael López de Heredia–the son and namesake of the bodega’s founder of the bodega–who, from the looks of his foot, was in the twilight of his life. He still made the rounds of the bodega every day though, coming down from his office in the winery‘s marvelous red-trimmed, landmark arte nouveau tower via the elevator that had been built especially for him.

Rafael López de Heredia, founder of the bodega.

Anastasio introduced me to him and we shook hands. I was excited to finally meet a family member after half a dozen visits to the winery. I asked him if he minded if I photographed him. He didn’t and I took several color slides. When I put the camera aside, he asked me, “Well, if you took my photograph, you surely won’t mind if I take yours.” He pulled out a camera that he always carried with him and took my picture. I was astounded that this bright, but dying, old man loved photography as much as I did.

Before the encounter with Don Rafael, Anastasio and I had been tasting several of López de Heredia’s wonderful wines in the cementerio and, as I described on my first visit, they were not wines to spit on the floor, nor did I. Perhaps that led to my confusing the two cameras that I was carrying. Don Rafael left and, since the roll in one camera was finished, I rewound it. As I was talking to Anastasio, I started to reload the camera. To my horror, I opened the camera in which the roll was not finished, the one with the photographs of Don Rafael on it. I soon as I saw what I had done, I snapped the back shut and rewound the film. When I returned to New York, I had the film developed. There was the image of Don Rafael, clear and bright, but with rays from the light flashing on the film all around. They were strange pictures, ruined for publication, but I kept them, perhaps to use if I ever needed to describe him in detail. Later I would discover that those photographs were the last ones ever taken of Don Rafael. Shortly after my visit, he died.

Years later, I visited Anastasio at the bodega again and took several photographs of him. It was clear that he was near retirement. In the late 1980s, I was visiting López de Heredia in the company of Pepe Osses and I asked him about Anastasio. Pepe told me that Anastasio had retired and had been ill, but he had told him I was coming and that I wanted to see him. I telephoned Anastasio from the bodega to let him know that I had arrived and he said he would come down. “I have something for you.”

Pepe and I were tasting a fine old vintage of Viña Tondonia when Anastasio arrived. We embraced and I felt how frail he was. I had know him almost fifteen years by then. He had a folder with him and he pulled a photograph from it. “I thought you might want this,” he said, and handed me a photograph of myself, taken by Don Rafael López de Heredia during that chance encounter several years earlier. Tears came to my eyes. I was overwhelmed. I hugged Anastasio again and thanked him, then raised my glass of Tondonia and toasted him, “Mil gracias, mí viejo amigo, mil gracias.” It was a fabulous and thoughtful present from an old friend.

It was the last time I ever saw Anastasio. He died shortly after my visit, but I still visit , because it is one of the world’s most wonderful, picturesque, and traditional bodegas. Now I stop in to see my old friend, Pepe Osses; the current director, Pedro López de Heredia; Pedro’s thirty-something daughters Maria Jésus and Mercedes; and son-in-law, Carlos, all of whom help carry on the tradition.

María Jésus López de Heredia in El Cementerio.

During a visit in 2002, just a year short of the 20th anniversary of my first visit to López de Heredia, I was invited to dinner at the winery with some thirty other Spanish and foreign wine writers who were attending a three-day tasting session of Rioja wines called Los Grandes de la Rioja. Formal dining tables were set up inside one of the most spectacular naves of the bodega. We were surrounded by huge 50,000-liter wooden vats that have been used to ferment and store wines here for more than a century. The subdued lighting, from old style, low-wattage and flickering candles created a fantastic ambience. I was seated next to María Jésus López de Heredia, with whom I had become friends in recent years. As we were chatting during dinner, I told her about my experiences with the 1947 Viña Bosconia in the mid-1870s and told her that I still believed after more than 30 years of drinking Spanish wines and 20 years selling the best wines of France, Italia and the United States to the top restaurants in New York, the 1947 Bosconia was still the best red wine I had ever drunk.

“Have you tasted it recently?” I asked.

“No, but, if you think it is that good, there we are going to taste it now. Just don’t tell anyone else,” she answered.

Maria Jésus called a bodega worker over and had a brief discreet discussion. The man left the room and ten minutes later returned with two bottles from the cementerio, one of which he opened on an empty station table between two of the wine vats, the other was a backup bottle in case the first bottle was flawed. It was the 1947 Bosconia, now 57 years old. It had been one of Anastasio’s young lads of 27 when I last drank it in 1974. Now, even with another 29 years tacked on, the wine was still magnificent. I was gratified to find that it every bit as stupendous as had I imagined it to be all these years. It was easily a 100-point wine, even coming on the heels of the great 1964 Viña Tondonia and 1964 Viña Bosconia–itself a 98-point maravilla– that we had drunk earlier at the dinner. No fading rose, the 1947 Bosconia still had a deep black ruby color and fabulous deep, ripe nose. The great acidity was in perfect balance with delicious fruit and still firm tannins, which needed food to soften them up.

R. López de Heredia, Barro de la Estacion, Haro (La Rioja).
Photo by Gerry Dawes, copyright 2008 / gerrydawes@aol.com

Even though Maria Jésus had sworn us the secrecy, the wine caused quite a stir at our table. We attracted the attention of her sister, Mercedes, who upon quizzing Maria Jésus, demanded that the other bottle of 1947 Bosconia be opened for her table. I called Paul White, an American wine writer who lives in New Zealand, aside and shared some of my glass with him. He, too, was astounded by the quality of this nearly 60-year old perfectly preserved museum piece that has stood the test of time and represents the pinnacle of quality that La Rioja is capable of obtaining–wines that do indeed still have a beautiful “bloom” to them even decades after the wines were made.

During the early part of the millenium, denigrating the traditional wine houses of La Rioja became a significant national pastime among Spanish wine writers, many of whom would have us believe that truly great wines must be dark as ink, overripe, above 14% alcohol and infused with enough new oak flavor to evoke visions of a sawmill. The time-honored house of R. López de Heredia, who has been making fine wines for more than 125 years came under attack as colorless, flavorless wines made by antiquated methods. I feared that they would have to dramatically change their philosophy and the style of their wines to survive. It has been heartening in the past few years to see young sommeliers from the United States and other countries embrace these wines for what they are: the unique, finely crafted, wonderfully drinkable wines of another era. I call them the wines of yesterday.

– The End –

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About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.

Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés, The James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef in America 2011

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts

Trailer for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

The Wines of the Canary Islands - Article in Wines From Spain News

Having a Drink with Gerry Dawes by Jordi Melendo, Verema.com

"Men! You always want more, even when you're skinning the poor by tearing down a block of old houses to make nice new ones." - - Fortunata y Jacinta, Benito Pérez Galdós

The Passing of My Old Friend Don Clarke, Artist Par Excellence, in Mijas, (Málaga), Spain Jan. 16, 2012. Que Decanses en Paz, Don.

Looking Back on the Wines of La Mancha, The Wine News, Oct.-Nov. 2003

Spanish Mushrooms, Setas, Hongos, etc. and Mushroom Dishes (With More to Come)

Decency because you wear something called a frock coat! What a farce humanity is. The poor always the underdogs, the rich doing as they please. I’m rich. I’m frivolous, I know it. -- Juanito Santa Cruz in Fortunata y Jacinta, Benito Pérez Galdós Epic Novel of 19th Century Spain

“The common people are very naive. . ." from Fortunata y Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós

Blue Hill at Stone Barns with Alicante Chef María José San Román, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2012 Slide Show

Photo Opp / Cigalas (Dublin Bay prawns) at Pontevedra Municipal market, Galicia.

Ferran Adría, Salvador Dalí and Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate

The Amazing Parkenstein Chronicles from Ron Washam, The HoseMaster of Wine

Grilled snails with sea salt and rosemary at Casa Elias, Xinorlet (Alicante).

Warning: Driving in Spain. Don't Get a Traffic Fine or You Will Get The Horn Twice!!

Goya's La Maja Desnuda (The Naked Maja) at Los Gatos Tapas Bar, One of the Campiest Joints in Old Madrid

Gerry Dawes's Visual Encyclopedia of Spanish Gastronomy & Wine: Cardos (Cardoons)

Pamplona Portraits from the Past: Alice Hall, Matt Carney, Derry Hall, Big Dave Pierce, Chris Humphreys, Joe Distler, Jimmy Hollander, Davey Crockett, Donnie Spicehandler, Charles Patrick Scanlan, Tim Hatfield, Noel Chandler, Jesse Graham, Ray Mouton & More

Excerpt from Homage to Iberia (Chapter One): My Arrival in Spain: 42 Years Ago, on January 2, 1968

Photography: All photos on this blog were taken with Canon cameras, these lenses and equipment (click on this link to see images of my photo gear).

Gerry Dawes's Visual Encyclopedia of Spanish Gastronomy & Wine

The Distancing Begins: Jancis Robinson's Read on Pancho Campo MW, "the (now ex) Spanish specialist wine reviewer" (Jay Miller) and "the supposed beacon of probity Robert Parker" in her review of 2011

Why corks are popping once more - - The Guardian

Amorim Natural Corks

High Alcohol: Harold McGee

Photo: Chef Michael Chiarello and Executive Chef Ryan Mcilwaith of Bottega Napa Valley with Jordi Mas (Mas Gourmets de L'Embotits) at Quim de la Boquería in Barcelona

English Version of Boquería Gourmand (Published in October by Viena Edicions), a New Book about Barcelona's Fabulous La Boquería Market

_______________________________________________________________________________About Gerry Dawes

Jim Budd on Jim's Loire "Pancho Campo MW: investigation or witch hunt?" Plus Robert Parker's "This blogger. . ." and Links to Other Stories in The Ongoing The Pancho Campo-Jay Miller-Robert M. Parker, Jr. The Wine Advocate Controversy

Pancho Campo MW: investigation or witch hunt? by Jim Budd

Pancho Campo MW – Vinos de Madrid: a response from Robert Parker

Top 10 drinks stories of 2011 The Drinks Business (The controversy is #8)

Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukkah from Gerry Dawes & Kay Balun.

Photo Op: Chef Michael Chiarello on One of My Customized Tours of Spain.

The UK "Drinks Business" Top Ten Stories of 2011; The Pancho Campo-Jay Miller-Robert Parker Wine Advocate Controversy & the Masters of Wine Institute's Investigation into Campo's Activities in Spain is Number Eight

Photo of the Day: Fishmonger at Pontevedra Municipal market, Galicia.

Photo of the Day: Pan Gallego, Galician Bread

Spain's giant Osborne bull heads for Dallas: Demand for Spanish roadside feature in US and Denmark, but Not Without a Little Revisionist Politically Correct Bullshit from Osborne's Spokesman.

Chef Jordi Cruz, One of the Fastest Rising Stars of the Post elBulli Epoque Gets a Second Michelin Star at ABaC in Barcelona.

ABaC Barcelona (From my article in Departures, May 2011)

San Sebastián Gastronomika 2010, A Basque Trilogy: Kaia, Elkano and Etxebarri

Gerry DawesPosted: March 1, 2011

Una Pura Fábula ¡Bienvenido, Mister Parquet*!: (in Spanish) A Humorous Look Back

La Rioja: R. López de Heredia, The Wines of Yesterday

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About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes
Posted: March 1, 2011