02 Wednesday Jan 2019
Posted in food & drink, gastronomy, sherry, tapas, tapas tours
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Started off the new year with a lunchtime sherry & tapas tour. While there are some new plans afoot for 2019, I am loving these sherry tours so much and hope to do a lot more of them this year, along with some other sherry-oriented activities. This time I ended up with five new sherry converts. 🙂
28 Friday Dec 2018
Posted in friends, gastronomy, getaways, restaurants, sherry
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Day two of the Jerez Getaway with Pam & Gord started off with a WHACK of hot crispy fried churros in front of the Central Market. After that, following THE PLAN IS THERE IS NO PLAN format we had been going with, we decided to see if we could go to Lustau for their Copa en Mano bodega visit. And there was still places available! So off we went after a quick visit to the market and cathedral.
I really enjoyed the concept of this tour. Usually people visit a bodega and then have a tasting at the end. With this one visitors start off with a glass of manzanilla and then taste their way around the various Lustau bodegas, finishing with sweet wines and then a bonus vermouth tasting in the shop. So it was a lot of fun, and we tasted some very special wines which I don’t think are included in the regular visit. And then it was time for lunch!
My friend Tomoko met us at Lustau, since (no plan, right?) we still weren’t sure where to go. From there I called one of my favourites, Albalá, and was told they were fully booked, but if we showed up we could go on a waiting list. Well, good enough for us! And sure enough, after a quick taxi ride, and about ten minutes after arriving and enjoying a drink at the bar, we got a table. Food was amazing, company even better. And afterwards we walked back into the centre for a penúltima. Then it was time for me to go. I didn’t have a return train ticket, leaving it open since THERE WAS NO PLAN. In the end I left Jerez at 7.15, and was home, unpacked, showered and with a load of laundry on by 9 pm. With my cats! It was a great getaway.
27 Thursday Dec 2018
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The theme for this latest Jerez Getaway was… THE PLAN IS THERE IS NO PLAN. Obviously there were some inklings and ideas, a few wanna-dos and several would-like-tos, but in general everything happened almost by chance.
I left Sevilla with Pam & Gord in their rental car, and on the way to Jerez it became apparent that we would actually get there in time for the noon English bodega visit at Tracición. So I contacted them from the car and said we’d be there. We arrived two minutes before the tour started. Yay! As always, it was a great experience, visiting both the bodega and private art gallery, and tasting some amazing VOR (+20 years) and VORS (+30 years) sherries.
Meanwhile, I was also hoping to stop in at Urium. I’d been in touch with RocÃo and she said her dad Alonso was planning to be at the bodega around 5.30, which was perfect as it would give us time to check into our accommodations after Tradición and have a quick lunch. Then I got a message from RocÃo saying that Alonso was meeting his friends at the bodega at 3 pm… okey dokey.
This actually gave us plenty of extra time to do our check-ins, but it also meant I had to see if my other friends Anne & Paul could meet us at Urium earlier. It also meant we wouldn’t have time for lunch between bodega visits. Oh well!
Turned out no lunch wasn’t a big issue as the other group of friends that Alonso had invited showed up with whacks of food, as did Anne & Paul. And suddenly it was a party.
Just so you know, Bodegas Urium do not offer visits to the public. This is a small family run bodega, with Papa Alonso, his daughter RocÃo and her husband Mario taking care of pretty much everything. It also isn’t the type of bodega suited to tourist visits, simply because it is a unique experience that can’t be replicated on a daily basis. Each time it’s something different, which this time included everyone singing Christmas carols in both Spanish and English. So lovely. I feel very privileged that the Urium family includes me in their sherry family.
15 Saturday Dec 2018
Posted in food & drink, gastronomy, instagram, sevilla, social media, tapas, tapas bars
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Running three Instagram accounts is a bit challenging at times, especially as I like to put SOMETHING up there every day. Lately I’ve been having fun with the disappearing stories, and will soon put some of them up permanently.
Here are some I did today (what you can’t see is that the little Winnie the Pooh in the middle pic is animated and doing a happy dance along the bar shelf). Click on the image to make it bigger… or you could pop over to the accounts and see the stories while they’re still there…
05 Wednesday Dec 2018
Posted in food & drink, friends, gastronomy, sevilla, tapas, tapas bars
Although I have happily hung out with Anne and Paul in Jerez on several occasions, this was the first time we have met up in Sevilla. As they happened to arrive in town the same day as the opening of my friend Ana’s new bar we stopped by there before heading out for some tapas at Palo Santo. Good times!
casa azahar 