The hyper-observant of you will notice that there is a sex shop a couple of doors up from this back street tapas joint. When I sat down to eat at La Taberna del Gourmet recently, I started to wonder whether “Pikante” might offer better value, and possibly have more edible items for sale.
Sometimes the seedy looking places turn out to be greatest. When walking along a Spanish seafront a good tip is to choose the place that has the most punters irrespective of decor or appearance. Xe Que Bó, Alicante Marina is just one of those places. It looks tackier than a Leeds nightclub carpet, but the food is fab.
I think I am addicted to capital haute cuisine. First I tried the 40th floor of the Gherkin. Then the revolving 34th floor of the BT Tower. Recently I have stooped, metaphorically, to the 28th floor of one of the ugliest buildings in London: The Hilton, Park Lane, but probably the one with the finest, or at least poshest, view.
2004 was, by most commentators, considered to be a good year in Rioja, and Laguardia might be the prettiest village in all of Northern Spain. So this wine has two things going for it already.
Marqués de Riscal is getting older by the day. When I reviewed the 2003 eighteen months ago, the bottle pronounced that the Bodegas was founded in 1860. In this latest 2004 release, two new years have been discovered. It’s a bit like Joan Collins in reverse. Wine must be the only field in which the older you are, the more attractive you become.
There’s always a danger that things can get a tad introspective at conferences like EWBC, so it is great to get the opportunity to broaden ones horizons out in the field, or terroir, if you will. A trip to see how cork is produced was, inevitably, sponsored by Amorim, who almost silently supply one quarter of the world’s natural wine closures. A heavyweight, if there were ever such a thing, in the cork world.
I’ve just returned from EWBC in Lisbon with a newfound passion for Portuguese wine. The whites impressed me most, even though they represented a mere champagne flute to the magnum of reds on display.
Esporão Reserva 2007 was a leftover bottle of tinto that found its way into my luggage by means not requiring wallet surgery – I can reveal no more than that.
I had to smile at yet another special offer using the recession friendly “staying in is the new going out” mantra. However, when I logged on to enter my Freixenet code on the top of my bottle, I discovered it is merely a way of capturing personal data for marketing spam.
The offers are the same, or barely more than the companies offer to anyone who subscribes from the web.
So save the trouble, the time, and the spam. By all means use emusic, LOVEFiLM, or Vie at Home, and you should definitely stay in one night and try a bottle of Freixenet Cava – it’s pretty good. Just do all the above independently.
After Mad Cow disease and Foot & Mouth, those of us living in the pig free zone of West Yorkshire are pleased to see an agricultural problem that does not affect us directly. I started feeling sorry for the pig farmers in Wiltshire until I realised that a sneeze in Mexico was like a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong, or a banker collecting his bonus on Wall Street. In any case, the impact on the world is (potentially) awesome.
So while I sit indoors in my H1N1 isolation with a super strength face masks in 100 packs, in an ante-pandemic panic order, my only consolation is yet another Spanish wine, a nice Albariño from Virgin Wines at £9.99.
Smelling of perfume (which makes a change from flu), grapefruit, parma violets and the sort of mixed flavours you get from cheese and pickle, this is a dry wine that does well as an aperitif, or with barbecued belly of pork.
A tissue please…..sneeze into it, bin it, wash your hands, drink lots of wine, survive the pandemic (hopefully)…….
In order to test my hypothesis that it is possible to contract Deep Vein Thrombosis whilst watching an opera, I went to see the 3.5 hour epic Don Carlos at Leeds Grand Theatre last week. But way back in 1867, Giuseppe Verdi must have foreseen that the seats in the balcony of this fine theatre would be designed for pigmies and children only. Although there was only one interval, he thoughtfully planned the opera in four acts with a total of six scene changes. My calves yelled with delight each time the curtain fell and I was able to stand for a few brief but exquisite seconds.
As an opera, Don Carlos has it all. Intrigue, deception, death, war, royalty and of course, adultery, all of which delivered by a huge cast. I know you southern types have Sadlers Wells and the Royal Opera House, but up here where it’s cold, wet and cheap… Well we have got Opera North and we are justifiably proud. This was one of the best productions I have seen with the pick of the cast being William Dazely as Rodrigo, veteran of equally excellent ON productions of Let ‘em Eat Cake and Of Thee I Sing where he was a great President – John P Wintergreen.
Anyway back to Spain where Don Carlos (son of Philip II King of Spain) had to suffer the ignominy and heartache of having his promised love, Elisabeth de Valois, marry his father in a political settlement, and as you can imagine, that makes for a promising start to any story.
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