Category Archives: wine

cata habla

12 Friday Nov 2010

Posted by in tapas, trips, wine, work

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, ,

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?

cata de jerez

08 Friday Oct 2010

Posted by in friends, sevilla, tapas, wine, work

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, ,

[click to enlarge]

Last night Jessica and I went to a fabulous sherry tasting (cata de jerez) at La Azotea Vinos & Más, which was both fun and educational. I’ve never known much about Spanish sherries and so it was great that José Argudo from Bodegas Gonzalez Byass took us through the whole sherry-making process while we sampled ten – yes that’s right, ten!! – different sherries. From the palest driest mosto to sweet musky fino/oloroso blends, we sipped our way through it all, even sampling some lovely 30-year-old wines.

Afterwards Juan brought over a jamón from their La Azotea restaurant across the street and we all had a bit to eat, though not nearly enough for the amount of wine we’d had, so Jessica and I went off to the Alameda for a late night snack, ending up at Al Aljibe.

We had a great time catching up on all our news and I’m really glad that Jess is going to be in town for awhile and not out doing field work in Doñana so much. It’s nice having her “home” again.

[also posted on azahar’s sevilla blog]

london day three

25 Saturday Sep 2010

Posted by in food & drink, friends, london, travel, trips, wine

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Coffee in bed, then ran out at 10.30am to meet Ben (friend of José’s) in deepest darkest Hackney, and afterwards whipped back down to St Pauls to meet Teutcher, who then asked me how I felt about fish… thought she was talking about lunch but she was in fact talking about fish eating ME. But lunch first. Off to Covent Garden to sample 32 Great Queen Street West, which was fabby, then off to Kensington to have feet nibbled upon by tiny fish. Loved it. And also the half-hour foot massage afterwards. And then – eep! – was getting late, so planned to meet up with Annie and T’s husband for a drink in Charing Cross before Annie & I headed out for dinner with twitter friends. Needless to say we arrived late after racing there on foot for a good half hour (buses were not making any sense by then). Met Rachel, José & Alessio in gastropub… had okay meal (the company was much better than the food) and around midnight Annie walked me to my bus stop and sent me safely on my way home. It was a day and then some. Click to enlarge the pics…

Today I leave for Bristol at 5pm…

london day two

24 Friday Sep 2010

Posted by in london, travel, trips, wine, work

≈ 15 Comments

Tags


What a day! Got up feeling a bit fuzzy after having stayed up way too late with Joe sampling his lovely Spanish wine collection… so at 9.30 this morning I found myself flying out the door with wet hair and in a state of semi-panic thinking I’d be late for the reason I came here in the first place. As it turned out I caught the bus straight away and just about made it on time (10-ish), and had quite an interesting day meeting other SimonSpeaks experts and learning more about the whole thing. When things finished just after 4pm I invited Florence Expert Nicky to come out with Madrid Expert Annie and me for a drink and a chat, which was quite fun. After that I went in search of an M&S to pick up some food as I had been promising Joe an “az carbonara” since the Hackney Gang was in Seville…

And so had a lovely comfy night at home with Clare & Joe.

A few pics above of stuff I saw and did.