Author-Artist-Owner of the bar of legend "Matador" in San Francisco, Barnaby "Barny" Conrad, legendary bullfight aficionado Charles Patrick Scanlan and Mrs. Conrad (Mary Nobles Slater) in Sevilla, Feria de Abril 1998.
Many
years later during the Feria de Sevilla in 1998, I met up with Barnaby
Conrad, his wife Mary and the great aficionada Charles Patrick Scanlan
at Scanlan's favorite Irish pub near the Cathedral in Sevilla. .
If you know nothing else at all about Barnaby Conrad, you should know that he
wrote one of the greatest ledes in history in his book, The Death of Manolete:
"On August 28, 1947, a multimillionaire and a bull killed each other in
Linares, Spain, and plunged an entire nation into deep mourning."
Once I was at a birthday party at The Doubles Club in New York for my friend
Alison Price Becker and she sat me at a table with her, George Plimpton and
others. He found out from our conversation that I had lived in Spain and knew
many matadores.
Plimpton said, "These aficionados are so into bullfighting that they can
tell you the name of the bull and that date that a bullfighter like Manolete
was killed."
I replied, "The bull's name was Islero from the ranch of Don Eduardo Miura
and he killed Manolete in the Plaza de Toros de Linares, Jaén, on August 28,
1947.
"See," Plimpton said, "I told you so."
About Gerry Dawes
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.
In 2018-2019, Gerry Dawes was the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on WPWL 103.7 FM Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York.
Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@gmail.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@spanishartisanwine.com