Category Archives: wine

impromptu

19 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by in food & drink, restaurants, sevilla, tapas, twitter, wine, work

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It’s been a bit of a crazy week, especially with me thinking I was quite mad to have taken on five – FIVE! – tapas tours during Semana Santa. The logistics of trying to organise the tours so as to avoid crowds and processions has been challenging to say the least. And so, having just finished three days in a row of evening tours – which all went very well I am happy to report – I was looking forward to making a nice meal at home and putting my feet up this evening.

So Nog & I went out to the Encarnación market (under Las Setas) to see what looked good and I decided to check out the little café/bar inside the market that Agustín had told me about. A bit like La Cantina in the Feria market, La Encarnación has a short list of daily fish on offer which they will fry or grill for you. Super fresh and very tasty.

Then along came a couple who asked if we spoke English and Spanish and said they needed our help. Turns out they wanted to find out if “huevas” were the same as shad roe and I suggested that they should try a tapa of it right then and there. Which they did. Verdict: almost the same but shad roe wasn’t quite so dry.

So after chatting a while and tweeting this photo of Philip with his huevas (which Fiona said came so near to being a naughty comment!) I mentioned my tapas blog and the tours and it turns out that I won’t be putting my feet up tonight. Instead I’ll be meeting Philip and Mary from New York at their hotel and going out on an impromptu tapas tour! They even invited Nog along.

As it’s been raining off and on all afternoon I don’t expect there to be many (if any) processions tonight, but that doesn’t mean that the bars won’t be crazy busy. Anyhooo… I just love it when stuff like this happens. And I’m quite looking forward to doing something a bit different tour-wise tonight as Philip & Mary have expressed an interest in trying out Flores Jamones & Vinos, which isn’t usually on my list as they don’t do tapas per se. They also told me that they didn’t mind if we had to get a taxi to go somewhere special – cool!

Stay tuned to my Sevilla Tapas twitter feed later if you’d like to come along…

a day in the country

27 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by in culture, food & drink, friends, photos, restaurants, sevilla, spain, tapas, wine, work

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[click to enlarge]

One of the reasons I occasionally wish I had a car (and a valid driving licence) is to take day trips to the many little villages near Sevilla. So I was delighted the other day when my Twitter buddy Eduardo got in touch to ask if I wanted to go with him and his girlfriend Mercedes to an olive oil & wine tasting in El Viso del Alcor. The tasting was held at the magnificent Basilippo hacienda in the countryside amongst their olive groves, and the snacks we enjoyed during the event were catered by Más Que Tapas. I was keen to go not only to learn more about olive oil (and, as it turned out, caviar!) but also to meet Aurore and Eduardo, who run Más Que Tapas, as they have often asked me to come out and see their place.

After a presentation on the different types of olives oils (we sampled three) inside the museum, we went out to the gardens to sample five different wines, paired with delicious snacks prepared with the olive oils we had just tasted.  But first we were in for a special treat – some local caviar and sparkling wine. We had a great time and I got to meet some new people, as well as a small pregnant cat which I ended up feeding chunks of bread dipped in my carrillada gravy. By the time the tasting finished we were informed that Más Que Tapas was offering a special “after hours” lunch menu (it was way past lunch time) and so we made our way over for something a bit more substantial.

[only click to enlarge if you’re not hungry]

In the end we didn’t go for the fixed menu and just (just!) ordered three dishes to share. Above you can see owners Eduardo & Aurore in the top corner, and at the bottom that’s Aurore again with Eduardo & Mercedes. In between some fabulous food: risotto with mushrooms, cashews & raisins, a burger of goat cheese, a slice of apple and foie, and some grilled scallops and chorizo on puff pastry with carrot purée. As if that weren’t enough we were given a couple of hot desserts to sample and I found myself wondering how on earth I was going to manage to eat anything on my tapas tour that evening…

It was a fabulous day in the country with lovely people. We got back to Sevilla around 6.30 and so later I wasn’t too concerned to discover that my clients were delayed getting into town from Lisbon which meant the tapas tour was rescheduled for today. In fact, I have to leave in a few minutes – see ya!

christmas lunch

23 Thursday Dec 2010

Posted by in christmas, food & drink, friends, sevilla, tapas, wine

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Just home from a wonderful Christmas tapas lunch with my friend Juan at Albarama. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen each other and so we made sure to get together during the holidays. It was great to catch up and have some great food and nice wine – I bet even ol’ grinchy Sledpress would have had a good time. Which just goes to show that she’s been doing this Christmas stuff all wrong…

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port

22 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in friends, wine

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The summer I moved in to this particular casa az, back in 2002, my dear Toronto friend Darlene’s darling daughter Adrienne came to stay with me for the second time (she’d also stayed with me one summer when I lived next door) but this time she was with her boyfriend Greg. And well, they were both great fun to have around, though I didn’t see them that much as they were doing some other travelling around, including a trip to Lisbon. And when they came back they brought me this beautifully boxed 1987 Quinta do Noval old tawny port, which I later found out was actually something very special, even back in 2002.

I happened to mention this port when I was hanging out with the Hackney Gang this past September (staying at Clare & Joe’s) and I swear Joe started gasping on the spot. Me? I know nothing about port and so I felt bad that I hadn’t brought it along as an additional thank-you gift, though I also wasn’t sure how well it had held up after spending eight years in my wee wine rack in all kinds of temperatures. I mean, perhaps it wasn’t even drinkable anymore. But that “missed opportunity” stayed in my mind, so that when London-based travel-writer Jill and her husband Tim came for a quick visit in October I asked if she had room in her suitcase to bring back this port for my friends. I then checked that one of the gang worked close enough to Jill’s to be able to pick it up without too much difficulty and so Clare spent one lunch hour going to get what she thought was something for me. Ha.

Then yesterday I received these pics, showing Joe and Simon (Clare was behind the camera) enjoying the port, which Joe said was a bit cloudy but still very drinkable. Made me feel like I was there, though also a bit homesick for Hackney and my friends.

 

cata habla

12 Friday Nov 2010

Posted by in tapas, trips, wine, work

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So this is what I did last nigh!

It was another free wine tasting (cata) at La Azotea Vinos & Más, this time put on by Bodegas Habla from Extremadura. I like to go to these because I always learn something and meet new people, and it’s a free night out! I invited María Paz from Bar Campanario and that ended up being a great choice for many reasons. First of all because she is very sociable and talks to everybody, and of course knows a lot of people from being in the biz. And as I’m also rather chatty we ended up getting invited to the bodega by the owner, who said we could stay there and they have horses and blah, blah… and María Paz said no problem, we could go in her car (!). And she repeated that offer when we went over to the bar for some tapas and ran into someone she knew who invited us to Córdoba (!!). Then her two sons Emilio and Alvaro showed up and they got to reminiscing about when they used to take English classes with me (they were 6 & 8 then and are 20 & 22 now), which ended up with them deciding to start classes with me again next week (!!!). So all in all, a good night out, plus I got to catch up with María Paz, whom I haven’t seen in ages. Also got lots of photos and stuff to put in my Seville blog.

The bad news is that I got into a big argument with my landlord as I still can’t pay the rent, which totally stressed me out, but I’m choosing to think about all the positive stuff that happened yesterday and the other good things happening, as it looks like quite a busy week coming up.

How was your day?