I am planning to do some fixed pages with all of these details (and a bit more hopefully), but for now I will post it as it is. Hopefully this is helpful for those wishing to travel to Beirzo.

Where is it? Bierzo is a geographic region that sits in the north west of Leon, on the border with Galicia to the west and Portugal to the south. It is about 400Kms from Madrid on the very good AP6 - Autopista del Noroeste, a very new superhighway from Madrid to A Coruña. The nearest airport is Leon, but you will need a car. While there are buses that service the area, the services are limitted.

Where to stay? You have more than a couple of options here, with a number of villages to stay in and different quality and style of hotel. Villafranca del Bierzo must be one of the prettiest little villages around and Las Donas is the best place to stay in Villafranca del Bierzo for my money. A small, modern hotel with lovely staff and owners, right in the centre of town, but still with excellent views of the river and bridges. A double room will set you back a very reasonable 78 Euros and a very good breakfast at the hotel will cost you 10. They also do a very nice dinner for a reasonable price. If you want something more traditional, head over to Cacabelos, about 4kms from Villafranca, to La Moncloa de San Lázaro. While more traditional, they have all the mod cons and even a could of rooms with Spa baths. They also have an excellent restaurant, bodega and shop full to the brim with local produce. Lovely people too, they made up a take home lunch for my wife on hearing she was a bit jet lagged!

Other options include Casa Méndez in Villafranca with also has a great restaurant. There is also a Parador in Villafranca, which was one of the more homely (read run down) paradores, but it is undergoing a full renovation and should be fantasic when finished. As a bonus it is just down the road from the Descendientes de J. Palacios bodega. There are also a swag of Camino de Santiago hostels around, which are quite cheap and cheerful for the most part.

Where to eat? As mentioned above hotels seem to hold the gems of the region. There are of course others around, I just haven’t been to them yet…if you go somewhere great let me know! Both Casa Mendez and La Moncloa de San Lázaro have restaurants that are seperate to the hotel (i.e. you don’t have to be a guest at the hotel to eat there). There is also a couple of good restaurants in Ponferrada, the only one I’ve been to is La Casona.

An interesting side note is that the region is the home of the Prada a Tope restaurant chain…not sure if thats a good thing, I’ve never been to one.

Whats good to eat there? There is lots to like in terms of food here. One really good tip I picked up from the guys over at Catavino is to ask “Qual es lo muy typica aqui“, or what is most typical here. You do need to know some Spanish to understand the answer, but often that doesn’t really matter, just ask them to bring it out! The one thing that I really love from this region is the cured meats. Much of the meat here is smoked in the curing process due to the humidity in the valley. The thing I like most is the cured Galician beef called Cecina (or Cecina de Leon to give it’s full name). Sliced thin like jamon and served with a little oil, it is magic stuff. Occasionally served with a little chili sprinkled on top (quite rare in Spain). Coming a close second on my list is Morcilla de Leon, which is not actually a saussage but a kind of goop that uses onions instead of rice, usually served with some potatoes. Super good.

Morcilla de Leon

In general, beef and lamb are the top meats here and the Asador is still king (good to see). One of the key dished in north western spain is the chuleton. This is a large (usually around 1-1.5kg), ribeye or t-bone from grass fed older Galician working ox/cow and is some of the best meet in the world for my tastes. There is also wonderful array of fresh and preserved produce from the local fruit trees. Plum, cherry and figs are made into jam, things are pickled (pickled figs with your chuleton are excellent), excellent cheeses and nut products like chestnuts (either preserved in brandy or in a paste). Deserts are the usual Spanish fare: a milk based flan or something with chocolate. The layer cake is also popluar.

Contacts:

We were looking for Cabrito Asado, roasted goat, so on the advice of Jose Luis who runs Hotel de Villa de Abalos where we are staying, we made a booking at Meson Chuchi about half an hour away in Fuenmayor. And it didn’t disappoint. There is a much more famous and up market Asador in Fuenmayor, Asador Alameda, that is also excellent for lunch, but that Cabrito at Chuchi is said to be the best around.

One of the great wine and food matches available in La Rioja is Cabrito Asado and a Gran Reserva from La Rioja. In this case we chose Bodegas Muga Prado Enea 2000. While not the best vintage of this wine, it has all the classic characters: pine resin, soft wood notes, plenty of fruit but savoury overall. It was a perfect match with the goat. The wine list here is quite good, lots of options from La Rioja including big name modern wines like Benjmin Romeo and Artadi to classics like Riojanas and C.U.N.E.. The list doesn’t have vintages on it, just ask and they will be more than happy to let you know. When we ordered the Prado Enea 2000, a number of other wines of better vintages (1995 or 2001) where also offered, which is very handy if you don’t know your Rioja vintages.

Of course it would be uncivilised to jump straight to the goat, so some artichokes with jamon and garlic to start with, which were ok, then some excellent Morcilla de Burgos, blood sausage. Then out comes the goat, a whole leg for my plate. A whole head of garlic (which I did eat) and a potato (which I didn’t find room for), thats about it. Needless to say, no dinner for me that night!

I will let the photos do the rest of the talking, needless to say Meson Chuchi is highly recommended. Closed on Wednesday nights and generally for a week in September. Phone: +34 941 450 422 or book at www.mesonchuchi.com

Amelibia is my favourite place to eat in the old walled town of Laguardia. We ate here a couple of times on our last trip and were very keen to get back and see what’s new. It’s a small restaurant (just 12 tables) that overlooks the vineyards and across to the Cantabrian mountain range. Laguardia is just about the last outpost of Euskadi, or Basque country, and as such the food here is a good mix of Basque food and traditional Riojan food. So you will have a menu that has things like kokotxas pil pil (throat of hake in an olive oil and garlic emulsion, a very Basque dish) and rabo de vaca al tinto vino (oxail in red wine, a typically Riojan dish).

Most importantly, the wine selection is excellent. Mostly made up of local producers from Laguardia (and there are many), plus selections from around Rioja, with a few other things like Cava and sherry in there as well. We went with Artadi Vinas de Gain 2006, which has soften over the past year and is even more silky and fragrant than my last tasting. Still, there is nice line and length with a firm backbone of acid, it coped with my very fatty main with ease.

These guys offer modern interpretations of traditional classics, so your oxtail has no bones and is wrapped in what looks to me to fried rice paper. Excellent quality ingredients are used here, including the great fresh produce of La Rioja. Today we had a carpaccio of bacalao, very thin slices salt cod over a base of aioli with oil, chilli flakes and chives, and some mixed vegetables with jamon and garlic to start with. For mains we had the excellent Rabo de Vaca and a dish of deboned pork knuckle and foie gras. The pork knuckle that had been slow cooked and shaped into a cube, with a big hunk of foie in between. Very decadent.

Pork knuckle and foie

Then there is dessert. Ultra dense chocolate mousse with Maldon salt and olive oil…sounds weird, tastes like chocolate on steroids! The salt brings out the chocolate flavour and intensifies it. This is going on high rotation at home!

Another bonus is that they are open on Mondays (someone has to!), so they are closed Tuesdays instead. Also closed Sunday to Wednesday for dinner. Booking essential in peak seasons, highly recommended at other times. Ph: +34 945 62 12 07

I’ve been off-line for the past couple of days, which has been kinda nice. There has been plenty to write about and take photos of tho. When I was planning this trip, I was having a chat to Dougie from The Spanish Acquisition about his last trip to Spain, his highlight was a day or so in Bierzo. I had planned to go to Rueda and Toro on the way to Ribera del Duero, but Dougie was raving about this little town called Villafranca del Bierzo, ‘It’s a must do’ he said. Sign me up, I thought. And he was right, it is now another in the long list of my favourite places in Spain.

The day started off slightly off track when we got to the hire car joint, they didn’t have the car we requested, but in the end we scored an upgrade to a 3-series BMW (thanks to the very nice staff Sixt at Madrid Airport!). With that all sorted we started out on a quick 400km drive up the Autopisa to Villafranca del Bierzo with a quick stop in Medina del Campo and Rueda for tapas and a quick poke around. The prices for tapas are a bit of a shock after Paris. 2 jamon croquetas, a wedge of tortilla and two glasses of a very tasty crianza from Ribera del Duero comes to the grand total of 5.40 Euros.

The thing about driving on big highways like the A6, complete with its massive bridges over the deep, thrusting river valleys of northern Castilla y Leon, is that I never know what to expect when you take that off ramp. It’s always a bit of a surprise, in this case a very good one. I started to notice small plots of stubby old vines in little backyard veggie garden sized plots in random places on the side of the hills. Must be getting close. Over the old stone bridge, now we are in the right place. Villafranca has that great contrast that you find all over Spain: our hotel is a lovingly restored old house, complete with elevator and modern convinces. The roof of the place next door has fallen in, grass and moss thriving on the old stone walls. The town is a jumble of falling down old buildings, grand cathedrals, large houses either well kept or restored to the former glory plus the Camino hostels, obligatory for this part of Spain. All of this set around the joining of two fast flowing rivers and the very necessary three bridges.

Just two winery visits here, at opposite ends of the spectrum: Martin Codax, who are essentially a very large co-op of growers, and Decendentes de D.J. Palacios, at the forefront of quality, top end wine from the region. More on these two soon, but in summary this region has fantastic potential that is already being tapped by some producers. However, it is a complex setting where a careful balance between modernising wine production for profit and the tradtional farming practices need to find a happy mid-point.

So now we are on in our home away from home in Abalos in La Rioja, with just a thought that we should have stayed a little longer and explored a lot more in El Bierzo. Oh well, there is always next time for Bierzo and Rioja is a wonderful place just to be.

PS The internet here is a bit slow, more photos soon.

While it’s only our second time in France, I can’t say that I have the same love for France that I do for Spain or Portugal. Don’t get me wrong, I like the place and its a great place to visit, but Spain seems to fit like my favourite old pair of jeans, as soon as I get off the plane I feel at home. Having a bit of Spanish under my belt helps to make things more comfortable I guess. Anyway, I’ll be there tomorrow night, tucking into a plate of Jamon and a half bottle of Manzanilla by 9pm…Que bueno!

A glass of manzanilla and some boquerones (white anchovies) was just the thing much on while I flipped through the wine list. The guys have one of the broadest lists of Spanish wines getting around, lots of different stuff from all over Spain, plus good stuff from Chile, Argentina and Portugal. While that was impressive, the stand out of the day was the new scallop and morcilla dish that’s in the running for the best thing I’ve eaten this year, and that includes a couple of weeks in Spain. Four little stacks of scallop and morcilla with the thinnest pastry envelope of creamy, yogurhty goodness, plus some finely chopped cauliflower sprinkled over the top. All that on a bed of braised cabbage. The piquillo peppers stuffed with salt cod were rock’n too. Definitely worth getting up at 4am to catch the plane for.

On the rumour front, we had a quick chat about the new Toro venture. The highly successful Numanthia bodega was sold to LMVH for a tidy sum that has allowed the group to both expand it’s operations in Rioja, hence the new bodega, and to concentrate on a new property in Toro. The new bodega is called Teso la Monja and can be found just across road from Numanthia, apparently you can wave to the new owner of Numanthia. A three tier structure of wines will continue here, look for new releases in the next couple of years.

Now these guys have a huge range of wines, so we sampled a range of their Rioja wines - including some of their best wines.

Sierra Cantabria Crianza 2005 - Sierra Cantabria is the more traditional range here and is made in a bodega in San Vicente de la Sonsierra. Full of fresh fruit and plenty of character. The wood is hardly noticeable and flavor profile is the classic red cherry, cola and wild herbs of Rioja. 88 Pts.

Sierra Cantabria Reserva 2004 - while this is the ‘traditional’ range, there has certainly been some work done to bring this wine up to date. You can see that french oak on the nose but it’s not intrusive. Fresh red cherry, herby undergrowth, a bit of clove and cinnamon with some licorice. There is a minerally edge to this wine that really makes it stand out. Excellent value drinking here. 90 Pts.

Sierra Cantabria Cuvée Especial 2005 - This wine doesn’t make it out to Australia, not sure why, but it was my pick of the Sierra Cantabria wines. Its 100% tempranillo from 30+ year old vines with some deft oak work. Lush and fresh with plenty of character, the nose is quite aromatic with violets and earthy notes, long length and good balance. A very smart wine for the price. 91 Pts.

San Vicente 2005 - Now this guy took a while to come around, but when it did it was well worth the wait. For me, the main thrust of this wine is the aromatic nose: violet, rose, cherry, raspberry and blueberry, vanilla, freshly cut wood and subtle herbs. The palate isn’t anything to scoff at either, fine knit tannins, a very long finish and the excellent balance that seems to be a trademark of the house. 94 Pts.

El Puntido 2005 - We had a couple of bottle of this wine during the trip, one at the excellent Restaurante Héctor Oribe in Paganos itself. Gutsy and potent, this shows sappy plum fruit with bright cherry, earth and spice. Definitely full bodied with plenty of oak work that suits this style. This is full strength Rioja, but it’s not over done and everything is impeccably balanced. 93 Pts.

Sierra Cantabria Organza 2007 - This is a white wine made from old Viura, Malvasia and Garnacha Blanca vines and aged in brand new french oak. A very modern style of white Rioja that drinks really well. Textured, but fresh and zippy. Notes of white melons, lemon peel and nutty spices, this is something quite different and shows you can do good things with the traditional Rioja white grapes. 90 Pts.

Actually, it’s too big for just one street, it’s more of an area of the old part of town. The streets are lined with small bars, each place specialising in one thing. Most places will serve a range of food and drinks, while some just serve the one tapa with some beer and wine.  You can come for lunch or dinner, but the important thing to remember is to stop in, have a drink and a snack, chat with the locals (even if you don’t know any Spanish!) and move on to the next place. For the full experience, turn up on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night at around 9:30pm and bring your sense of fun. The streets will be full (and I mean full) of all kinds of people: whole families, young punks, famous winemakers and gitanos (gypsies).

The tourist office in Logroño (in the big square at the top of the old town) puts out an excellent little book of who does what, and everything is on offer: pigs ears, mushrooms, top level jamon, pork, artichokes, seafood and tripe. The same goes for drinks, anything goes: from very top end red wines from Rioja to a glass of water. if you want the small beers that the locals are drinking, ask for a corto. A larger beer is a caña (pronounced ‘can ya’).  The thing that makes the food here special is the produce, it’s fresh and full of flavour.  Here are a couple of my favorites: 

Bar El Sabas: Famous for the Tortilla de patata, and it is very good. Choose from a couple of different versions, salt cod is my pick. They also have a good list of wines, one of the better ones on the strip. Calle Albornoz, 7.

Taberna de Correos: This little joint at Calle San Augustin, 8, specialises in skewers of Iberian pork cooked over wood and drizzled with a honey reduction. Ask for La Pluma to order these.

Bar Plan B: Another on Calle San Agustin (No. 41), this one specialises in Foie, the best one is Foie al Pedro Ximenez washed down with a glass of young red wine. Amazing stuffNot everyone gets this one. I go here for the Esparrago frito, white asparagus wrapped in ham and cheese, then battered and deep fried.On Calle Laurel

La Universidad:These guys are the pulpo (octopus) kings on the street. Go in for Pulpo a la Gallega and a beer. Travesia del Laurel.

Bar El Soriano: This is the best of the best. It must be one of the most popular and smallest bars on the strip. So simple but oh so good. It’s a couple of mushrooms drowned in garlic oil, with a tiny prawn on top and a bit of bread on the bottom. To look like a real local, don’t eat the bread. All of this with a corto will cost you 1 euro. There is a guy here who always tells me it’s the best tapas bar in the world…he may just be right. Oposite La Universidad.

Making up just 5% of the harvest, you couldn’t say that white wine is a priority for the region. There is some decidedly dodgy white Rioja around, but there some great stuff if you look for it.

First up is R.Lopez de Heredia’s Vina Tondonia Reserva and Gran Reserva Blancos. These wines are just plain crazy, aged for 6 (Reserva) years and 10 years (Gran Reserva) in barrel, then another 10 or more years in bottle. The current release here in Australia is 1989 for the Reserva and 1981 for the Gran Reserva. Made from mostly Viura with a splash of Malvasía (10%), these wines speak of old nobility and hamfisted adherence to the tradition for long barrel aging. The nose on these things is amazingly complex, they have layers of flavour and constantly evolve in the glass, even hours later. Acid is the key here, and this is what drives these wines. They demand to be served with excellent fish or white meat, but excel with wild mushrooms. I am not so much a fan of the red wines here, but the blancos and rosados are amazing.

Next up is at the completely opposite end of the scale. Remelleri Blanco. There is not a lot of this made, we happened upon a couple of bottles in a wine shop Laguardia and jumped at the opportunity to enjoy this wine back at the hotel. The only native grape in the mix is Garnarcha Blanca, which is very rare in Rioja anyway. The rest is made up of Vigonier, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Moscatel, Marsanne and Roussane. Again, it’s a fairly crazy wine that has layers of flavours that start of kind of vegetative, moves on to floral then on to fruit. This is one very out there wine.

And finally the surprise wine of the trip. In the little village that we stay at in Rioja Alta, Abalos, there are just 3 bars. They are usually filled with the blokes who tend the vineyards and cellars of the village’s bodegas, a few kids, a dog or two and loads of cigarette and cigar smoke. I would usually drop in for a quick glass before dinner, mostly ordering vino blanco as I’d been tasting young, extracted red wines all day and wanted something fresh. This cheap (65 Euro cents is the cost for a small glass) white wine was amazingly fresh, with just a hint of lemony fruit but excellent acidity and minerality that revived my tasted buds and burnt off the post siesta fog swirling around in my brain. Amazing stuff, and I’m sure not much of it makes it out of the region. It was so good, I bought a bottle back with me.

Like most things in Rioja, I find there is room for both the traditional and modern. But there is so much in between those two extreames that when I’m asked to describe white Rioja it tends to be a very long conversation….

Looking back on the trip, I think the main things that I’ve taken home with me is the passion of the growers, the spectacular secenery and amount of diversity the place has. But like most travel, its the people that I’ve met along the way that made the trip worthwhile and allowed me to get into what Rioja as a place and wine is all about. So a big thank you to everyone who had us in for a poke around their vineyards and bodegas, tastings and some seriously good jamon. Also a big thanks to the importers here in Australia who set up a lot of the visits for us.

I’ll organise a gallery of photos in the next week or so, with a lot more to go up over the coming weeks.

• Wine tourism is a huge focus for both the region and the bodegas. Every second bodega we visited is planing either a hotel,  a spa, a restaurant or a new architect designed bodega. There are road signs everywhere now, so its much easier to find those out of the way bodegas and hotels. The guys are doing a great job in making it easier for tourists to come and see what Rioja is all about. This is a big turn around from 3 years ago. However, you need a good deal of Spanish to make the most out of the trip.
• The whole traditional v’s modern thing is a bit of a non event, people are trying to make the best wines that they can, in a style that suits their view of what Rioja is.  I talked to a number of winemakers who make very modern wines who go on to priase the very traditional wines of Lopez de Herrida for their unique style, yet say nothing of  ’supermarket’ producers who don’t seem to have a style.
• Rioja is changing a lot at the moment and will continue to as the older growers pass their land onto the younger generation. This is leading to very small bodegas that produce a couple of barrels worth of wine a year, where the watch word is quality, not quantity. There are loads of very high quality vineyards that are not being used to their full potential at the moment, so this will only increase as time goes on.
• The quality of the food in the region is very high and is very consistent. Opposed to more touristy regions such as San Sebastian, you can find good food just about anywhere here. New restaurants have popped up all over the place and the quality of the local produce is outstanding (as it always has been). The photo on this page should be enough for most foodies to get on a plane.
• Biodynamics and Organic methods are gaining popularity with the smaller producers, even some of the larger ones are getting in on the act.
• Vintages: 2004 and 2005 are spectacular, but both very different. As a broad brush statement, 2004 is more structured and tannic, 2005 is more elegant with lush fruit and more typical Rioja structure. 2006 is very good as well, just lacking some of the high notes of  04 and 05. 07 and 08 are years to pick by producer. Most of the stuff I tasted from barrel looked very good for both years, however both years were quite good for whites.
• As much as I love drinking and aging the wines of Ribera del Duero, I think Rioja is the most spectacular and livable wine region in Spain (maybe Jerez should get a mention here as well).
• PR and media awareness is really front of mind here. Not that I would really class myself as media, many of the people I talked to regularly read the site (one winemaker took me to task on a review!). This may be an old region, but they are definately onto the new media thing.

The Internet connection is a bit dodgy here, so just a short update. We spent an amazing day with Pablo from Compania de Vinos de Telmo Rodruigez. These are ‘crazy guys’ as the Spanish say, but in the very best way. Their vineyards are spectacular, the photo is of the small bodega they use for Altos de Lanzaga and a few other small vineyards that will see some very interesting wines on the market at some point.

Lots of other storys to tell, but they’ll have to wait. I have a couple of visits today and then off to San Sebastian for a break…I think.

Regardless of travel woes, its great to be back in Rioja. I have forgotten just how lively and vibrant the place is, even in winter. The weather is spectacular, sunny but freezing cold. Perfect for walking around, taking photos and eating the odd bit of jamon. Highlight from today were lunch with the guys from Artadi and visits to all of the Eguren bodgeas (all 3.5 of them, one is still under construction). The low light was missing an appointment at Marques de Riscal, very poor form on my part. Tomorrow is Muga, Tondonia, Roda and Ramon Bilbao which will be a bit easier all being in walking distance of each other…

The photo is a view from the Vinos de Pagos bodega over the El Pundito vineyard to Paganos.

On a much sadder note, it is very strange to be over hear enjoying myself while fires are still raging not far from home. There is another post on the front page about the Australian Wine Trade Bushfire Raffle, I encourage anyone who hasn’t donated yet to buy a couple of tickets and if you win send the wine to your local CFA station. Those blokes (and girls) deserve a bloody good drink.