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Driving around the middle North of Spain for our week of hedonism incorporating a pukka C7 castle, a cunningly restored C12 monastery and the very best wine and food the country had to offer ...  Above: Our C7 castle casts a shadow over the Ribera del Duero landscape first thing in the morning Leaving Valladolid we were on a dual mission: wine and steak. World class in both cases especially the steak; not much can surpass the Txuleta de vacuno mayor at Casa Julián in Tolosa, despite the protestations of my friends from other parts of the world. The raw ingredients and Julián's cooking method are a match made in heaven. However, we had a few days to get there, presumably soaking up the best Tempranillo the region has to offer. Our first stop was to be for two nights in a castle a fairly easy 60 km to the east of Valladolid. Originally we'd planned to stop further west, near Quintanilla de Onésimo and inch eastwards along the Duero, taking in bodegas as we went. But, as we know "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley". Thanks Robbie Burns! A lack of familiarity with the ways of winemakers, and their bodegas, in this special region sent us aft about face. Having been used to visiting wineries from Stellenbosch to Saint-Émilion, mostly at the weekend, and to dropping in pretty much unannounced, we were caught pretty much flat-footed. Many of our chosen wineries were closed at weekends and definitely needed an appointment. We set off from Valladolid on a Friday evening (should have been early afternoon had it not been for Avis's afternoon siesta) and whizzed past my favourite bodega, Garmón Continental, after about 30 km. Thankfully we'd made an appointment for the Monday so all was not lost but, by that stage, we'd have moved on from the castle to a monastery 60km further east. It was NOT Garmón's fault that we had to retrace our footsteps by 80 km. More of this a little later. In the meantime we furtled around with mixed success and with a big treat up our sleeves for Tuesday the 8th. In fact two! A castle and a monastery The road to Curiel de Duero was easy enough except for the last few hundred metres of hairpins to reach the castle entrance. Once we had breached the battlements everything was pretty splendid although there were one or two signs that it was due for a touch up after a major refurbishment about 15 years previously. I had thought it was extraordinary value and it was, given the views displayed in the montage below and the splendid bed in a vast room. Our castle looked at Castillo Peñafiel 5km away across the plain so we had to visit the latter. Once there I was berated for asking how the people in the window-in-the-wall could remain so still[1] and when I was disabused of the "fact", I almost had to use the castle's facility alongside. To add to her frustration, Shan kept being photo-bombed by a fellow visitor shooting back at her and took her irritations out on photographing a barrel in the museum which had inexplicably been decorated with a portrait of Bowie. In the spirit of our Dave, I rather liked the metallic sculpture of the bunch of grapes at the entrance to the excellent museum. The foil to that was every winemaker's nightmare - Phylloxera[2] - which, in turn, was counterbalanced by the best aroma testing bench I've ever seen. I could have spent an hour there alone! We moved on to try to find some bodegas that were open over the weekend, starting with Emilio Moro in Pesquera de Duero, but that seemed more of a vibrant wine-bar going hell for leather on a Saturday. We moved inland a bit, to places that seemed to fit our requirements such as Arbás, just outside Piñel de Arriba and which had a curious horizontal chimney, but there was nobody at home. The town was pretty with a typically dominant huge church but we couldn't find anywhere to eat so returned to Peñafiel and a charmingly ordinary little café with generous portions and a glass-fronted display cabinet of some ancient Ribera wines. Headed back towards our castle and veered off to Bocos de Duero where the Señorio de Bocos bodega was closed, this time seemingly permanently. Drove on fruitlessly to Mambrilla de Castrejón before turning back to Valdearcos de la Vega and turning off again on a bit of a wild goose chase to Corrales de Duero. At this point fatigue was setting in and we chose some less travelled roads that looked as if they'd take us back to our Castillo. After a few hairy moments on some non-roads, Shan managed to guide us across some spectacularly wild hills and home to the beautiful road in the picture below (row 2, rhs). It was our last night in the Castillo and we joined some new-found friends from the US, Misty and Randy Knack on a terrace overlooking the village floating in the dark. Check out Shan's cunning pic lower down, just before the monasterial lav. A few bottles were consumed antes y después de la cena with the Castillo management turning the lounge lights on and off impatiently around 11 PM. This seemed a little harsh given Spanish dining hours (no food before 9 PM). Randy was just getting into his stride with some wines he'd discovered during the day off the Tim Atkin[3] recommendations I'd passed him. After a hearty breakfast the next morning, designed to offset the winey evening the night before (isn't one supposed to do that in Ribera del Duero?) we set off at a respectable hour for our monastery at La Vid. We had expected something a bit grand but weren't totally prepared for the level of recent refurb that had taken place. Hence the pic of the lav ... hard to imagine that too many monks had enjoyed the luxury and space of our room over the past 9 centuries. The monastery restaurant sold us some decent Matasnos for us to have with our lunch and over the next few days, too. Some serious wine stuff Despite having been ill-prepared, we'd already sampled some of the good stuff but we had saved the best until last. More by accident than design, perhaps, but what a treat! Our first big wine visit was the next morning, retracing our wheel tracks 80 km in monsoon-like conditions to Garmón Continental. Luckily we'd given ourselves plenty of time because the weather was truly foul and the traffic was heavy on that Monday morning. We were meeting Paula López de Partearroyo and she gave us a comprehensive tour of their immaculate winery before moving into the engine room (first two pics below) where the final wine is stored under supervision, being monitored for the perfect blend before final bottling. We tried two components of an upcoming blend ... one was fresher but with less tannin. Shan, not a red wine drinker, preferred the fresher option whereas Paula and I, red wine drinkers, liked the one with more grip. I'll be interested to try the mix when it comes to fruition in a year of two. Sadly we couldn't drink too much with a return to La Vid pending. Paula recommended an excellent nearby restaurant, the Fuente Aceña, for lunch, where Shan and I had a whole new level of burger ... lamb with burrata and Provençal tomatoes. We were replete even after a pretty roundabout journey back to the monastery. There was a simple bar in La Vid where we thought we'd grab a snack (above). Sadly it was closed so it was our home base or nothing, I threw care to the wind and chose a pud, "Drácula", a confection of marinated strawberries with Helado de Vainilla (sic) y Sirope de Coca Cola. It wasn't half delicious, if a bit lurid in its seemingly bespoke bowl. The next morning we headed off early on another cloudy day. We were bound for Tubilla del Lago and Marta Maté, my other unmissable bodega[4]. Unlike most other Ribera del Duero winemakers marta maté (the name is a concatenation of Marta Castrillo and César Maté who head up the operation) refers to Tinto Fino rather than Tempranillo grapes for their wine[5] although they are basically the same. Whatever! The wine is simply splendid and is carefully nurtured through stainless steel and concrete barrels and large capacity French and American Oak Barrels. Marta can be seen above proudly showing off the installation containing the former, all very modern. Sadly, this level of quality is almost impossible to procure in the UK. I have tried contacting quite a few wine merchants of my acquaintance to try to make the link but so far with no success. It seems Ribero del Duero wines are not as entrenched in the UK wine markets as they should be. Marta Maté has the complexity that makes it interesting and delicious and, what is possibly even more important, the characteristics such as grip which allow it to improve with age. I've seen this with Garmón, which is marginally more available on this side of the channel, but even they struggle to interest UK distributors and would rather focus their attention on countries who are more receptive to their emerging excellence. Boy are they missing out. But our day was running out and we were still faced with a spectacular 280 km rush to get from the other side of Burgos to Tolosa where we were destined for a late lunch in the pinnacle of world steakdom. Off to Tolosa for a steak and pintxos blowout ... Our primary (and possibly initially only) reason for visiting Tolosa was to eat steak at Casa Julián. However, if you look in the right corners there are plenty of pintxos bars to occupy a couple of days in the town. Sadly Julián Rivas is no longer with us but the Casa[6] he started in 1954 follows his tradition seemingly to the "T", right up to the retention of the soot stained ceiling in the main dining room, which evidently was a condition of his passing the place on to the next generation. Our companions for two days in Tolosa were Ann and Craig Eriksen, Shan's cousin. Like us they'd been eager to visit Casa Julián for a few years. It's not easy to get a reservation and Craig had kindly agreed to badger them until we had a spot. This was a few months before the event and we had to be content with a weekday, arriving before 3:30 PM. Actually this was perfect because there really wasn't any rush to chase us out of the place after a good few hours. Essentially there are only a few ingredients and when it comes to the main course. It really is the rare Chuleton ribeye perfectly coaxed for 45-minutes that anyone's going to order when it could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Craig, the customer that is not me in the photomontage below, has so many barbecue devices at his house in France that he refuses to admit just quite how many there are. But you could see the admiration on his face when sitting in pole position alongside the open fire and the sheer delight when the current head chef explained, graphically, what he was going to do with the meat. But first we had to eat our vegetables separately ... perfect specimens of asparagus and tomato and, of course, sublime bread and butter. We accompanied that with a bottle of Ribera (Shan had Chardonnay, which is why she is known in concentric circles as Chardonnay Shan) which did a great job but we decided that a fine bottle of Priorat might just have the edge with a perfect steak. The central plate above contains a helping of roast peppers and two perfect pieces of trimmed ribeye (there was plenty more ribeye for those who wanted it) that were just sublime. We were left with just enough room for sweets and pudding wine. I think we shared desserts and the state of our table when it was just about time to go speaks volumes. I wouldn't demur if asked if that had been my ultimate meal. Actually as close to simply perfect as you'll ever get. What better to do than to return to our hotel, splash our faces and get stuck into the bottle of Marta Maté I'd managed to slip into my suitcase that morning. We may have followed that with another bottle of Ribera and a few glasses of Chardonnay ... I can't remember. I'll have to ask Craig. A day of pintxos[7]. It was a lovely day loafing around with friends. I believe we might have visited 3 or 4 more Pintxos bars before Shan and Ann finally felt the need for a comfort break and iPhones. The rain continued as we followed the lamplight back to the hotel; Goodbye for now, Espana ... It was a short drive, including a stop for the obligatory car wash to get back to Donostia a.k.a. San Sebastián so that we could drop off the car at its Avis destination ... ... and then round and round the city we travelled, trying to find the entrance to the car park. In ever decreasing circles over the Urumea Itsasadara (basically the river) and then in ever increasing circles (incorporating the currently out of use railways station) and over the Urumea Itsasadara (basically the river) followed by ever decreasing circles over the Urumea Itsasadara (basically the river) until we finally made a lunge for what may have been it and we struck lucky and dropped the car on Level -4. The attendant in the Avis cubicle 3 floors up was as helpful and friendly as her colleagues in Valladolid had been grumpy and rude so it all ended happily ever after on that Thursday morning. Coming Next
Heading home ... can we do it in one go from Spain to Faringdon entirely on public transport? [Endnotes]:
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