Sanlúcar de Barrameda, An Amazing Lunch Amongst the Barrels of la Solera at Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana, on a Gerry Dawes Taste of Western & Southern Spain Trip

 

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Maestro, family member and retired from the Board of Directors of Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana, Javier Hidalgo took a break from his retirement at my request and entertained our group at lunch, telling some members of the group, "You are lucky that you know Gerry Dawes."

 

 

 Javier Hidalgo took a break from his retirement at my request and entertained our group at lunch with a tasting of Manzanilla Sherries from cask and explained the intricacies of making Manzanilla de Sanlúcar,

 

 

 Barrels in la Solera at Bodegas Hidalgo la Gitana.  The painting is a scene from the spectacular thoroughbred horse races that are run Bajo de Guía beach each year on two weekends in August.  Even retired, Javier Hidalgo who always maintains his jockey weight, still races and sometimes wins!

 

 

 La Gitana, one of the greatest of all Manzanillas, from Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana, one of the greatest of all Sherry houses. 

 

   

A fideuà de mariscos, a type of paella made with thin spaghetti-like pasta, instead of rice, cooked with seafood.  Parto of our lunch at La Gitana, catered by the excellent El Espejo Restaurante in the Barrio Alto of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. 

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Gerry Dawes will be leading a specialized gastronomy, wine and cultural tour to Western and Southern Spain from Tuesday, October 14 – Thursday, October 30, visiting the great cities and towns of Madrid, Segovia, Ávila, Salamanca, Trujullo, Mérida, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Sevilla, Ronda and Málaga. For further information contact gerrydawes@aol.com. 

 

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Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain Volume I Enhanced Photography Edition

 

(Available at Amazon, Despana (NYC), LaTienda.com, La Boca Restaurant and Bodega, Santa Fe, NM), at Ibiza Kitchen (Chappaqua, NY) and at Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore (NYC) and at a punto, calle Farmacia 6, Madrid. 

 

 

Comments are welcome and encouraged.

 

Text and photographs copyright by Gerry Dawes©2021.  Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2021 on Facebook.  Publication without my written permission is not authorized.

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  Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?

 

Poem by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington,

in the courtyard of the Hispanic Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York City.

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In 2019, again ranked in the Top 50 Gastronomy Blogs and Websites for Gastronomists & Gastronomes in 2019 by Feedspot. (Last Updated Oct 23, 2019) 

"The Best Gastronomy blogs selected from thousands of Food blogs, Culture blogs and Food Science blogs in our index using search and social metrics. We’ve carefully selected these websites because they are actively working to educate, inspire, and empower their readers with frequent updates and high-quality information."  

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

 
About Gerry Dawes

My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's culinary life." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019

Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York (streaming live and archived at www.pawlingpublicradio.org and at www.beatofthevalley.com.)

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. 

 

Pilot 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; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

Sherry: Culinary Institute of America - Greystone (Napa Valley)

Culinary Institute of America - Greystone (Napa Valley)

Worlds of Flavor Conference

Interview with Gerry Dawes on Sherry 

Spain produces one of the most fascinating and least understood beverages in the world: Sherry. Made in a spectrum of styles, from dry to sweet and from pale gold to walnut brown, sherry can accompany a meal from soup to dessert. Here to guide us through some of the finer points of tasting and serving sherry is a longtime enthusiast and connoisseur, Gerry Dawes.

Q: Before we start the tasting, can you give a quick overview of how sherry is made?

I recommend that you look at books like Julian Jeffs’ (Sherry by Julian Jeffs, Faber & Faber, 1961) because the fractional blending, or solera, system is quite complex. To oversimplify it, if you imagine a pyramid of barrels, you draw off the wine you’re going to sell from the bottom row, then refill those part-empty barrels from the second row, and refill the second row from the top row. So some of the sherry in each bottle is as old as the solera itself.

If you see a bottle that says “Solera 1950,” that was the year the solera was established. New wine keeps getting added, but each barrel contains fractional amounts of wine from the earliest foundations of the winery.

That’s what gives sherry its continuity and character. It is constantly building on its ancestor wines. The young wine takes on the character of the older wine, so you’re able to produce a uniform, steady product year after year.

Most of Spain’s best sherries are now available in the U.S. The important thing to realize is that sherries now are better than they’ve ever been in their history. The sherry business went through a bad period, but the industry opted for quality, and what we’re seeing now are some of the greatest sherries every made.

Q: And the price is right.

For what you get out of a bottle, they’re very inexpensive. You can get eight to nine pours out of a bottle, so it costs far less per serving than a red wine consumed in one sitting by two people.

Dawes is going to introduce us to some of his favorite sherries. Listen closely to the words he uses when describing them. Some of the aromas and flavors he discerns in sherry are uncommon in Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and other familiar varietal wines.

Note that he begins his tasting with the most delicate wine and ends with the richest. In order from left to right, they are: manzanilla, fino, amontillado, Jerez cortado, oloroso and Pedro Ximénez.

Q: What about serving temperatures for these wines?

The manzanilla and fino should be served chilled. The others should be at cellar temperature, the temperature of a good white Burgundy—not chilled but cool. Never serve the fino or manzanilla warm, and never leave them open behind the bar. Always make sure they’re kept under refrigeration.

As for pairing sherry with food, Dawes has some great ideas.

(Click on link and scroll down to interview and video link.)

From Barrel to Glass

If you ever visit the sherry bodegas in Jerez de la Frontera or Sanlucar de Barrameda, you will see winemakers drawing sherry samples from barrels in a most dramatic fashion.