Calle Laurel: a culinary institution

On my first trip to Rioja, I was given some great advice: ‘There are plenty of good places to eat in La Rioja, but there is only one place that you musteat during a trip here and that is the tapas street of Calle Laurel in the old town of Logroño.’ There are tapas streets in other towns: Haro has it’s ‘Horseshoe’ area and there are good little bars in most towns and villages, but they don’t come close to Calle Laurel.

Vega Sicilia new releases 2009

This was actually billed as a master class, so a bit more than a new release tasting. And seeing as the next vintages were also available was a big bonus. Three days after returning from Rioja, a tasting of wines from Ribera del Duero and Toro was a most welcome change of atmosphere. It is [...]

White Rioja

Just before I left for Spain, I had this crazy idea of searching out the best white Rioja I could find. To be honest, I found loads of white wine but its very difficult to choose a single wine as the best, so I’ve gone with three. These are three very different wines, and everything about them is different: the way they are made, the grape varieties used, how they are aged, and when they are drunk. I knew that two of these would be high on my list, but the third was a real surprise.

The Sunday Roast Chicken Challenge

Just about every Sunday night at Casa Tinto y Blanco we fire up the oven and have a roast chicken with a bottle of wine. Its become something of a tradition that ends the weekend on a high, and is much more enjoyable than ironing my shirts and folding my jocks for the week. Plus it gives me a chance to look wines, mostly white wines, from all over the place with some nice food. I’ll try to write up most of these sunday sessions as something a little different for the site. If you have any suggestions for either a roast chicken recipe or a wine to try with the chicken, leave a coment and I’ll see what I can do.

Observations in Rioja

rioja-3Driving around Rioja for a couple of weeks has given me the opportunity to see a lot, taste a lot and get a good feel for what is going on. A lot has changed in the 3 years since my last visit to Rioja, just about all of it for the better

Australian Wine Trade Bushfire Raffle - Now Open

Bert at Winestar (with the help of many others I’m sure) has done an amazing job on organising this. I couldn’t put it any better so, I’ll let him do the talking:
Please go to http://www.winestar.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20182 for the latest
information - particularly for wine and mainstream media outlets or for those
forwarding to friends.

Dear All

The final communication about [...]

10 years of Cillar de Silos Crianza

Late last year, The Spanish Acquisition put on a retrospective tasting of all of the vintages of Cillar de Silos Crianza that they have brought into the country, right back to the 1997….

From the Cellar: Marques de Riscal Reserva 2001

I’ve had a couple of emails and comments asking how this is traveling, so I cracked one open with the 2004 to see what is happening in the bottle. Very prosmising at the moment, with more to come in a couple of years. If I hadn’t seen these side by side, I would have never noticed the new label on the 04.

Solomillo al Whisky

This is my favourite tapa of all time. A big call. Well it’s at least in the top 5. You will find a dish by this name in many areas of Spain, for me this is the one and only solomillo al whisky. If you’ve been to Sevilla, you will have seen it on the menu, it is the home of this simple marvel of blokes in the kitchen.

From the cellar: Roda Reserva 2003 375ml

I bought a case of half bottles of 2003 Roda thinking that I’d stick them away somewhere dark and cool for 5 year then pull them out for drinking on quiet nights at home. Good idea, not so good in reality though. They never made it out of the wine fridge at home into off site storage, so the odd bottle comes out now and then when I feel like a glass and a half of something good. There are 7 bottles left a year later.