a grapy weekend

This third weekend of October made history because of the grapes hanging in front of the house. For some unclear reason I decided to play with them and in the end I was able to improvise a couple of experiments that didn't look or smell too bad. One of them, the baked one, also tasted extremely well. For the second one it's too early to know.

urbitarte txotx

After three years we made it back to the entertaining sagardotegia -cider house- of Ataun. Ww had the opportunity to taste simple food, but extremely tasty one. These delicious hake kokotxas are a perfect example.

abel's neighbour: qbc 2014

Today we had our first bottle of 2014 Que Bonito Cacareaba, maybe not as nice as the 2013, but still rather enjoyable. Another favourite from San Vicente de la Sonsierra, where it was supposed to be known as Gallocanta.

abel's grapes

I guess this has been our year for discovering San Vicente de la Sonsierra. After tasting Abel's white Tempranillo and white Garnacha (Grenache), yesterday we tried his red Tempranillo, 2012 Cosecha Personal.

lubrigante wednesday

Today we had a pretty amazing meal: local lobster, aka lubrigante, with bomba rice from Calasparra, plus white Grenache and white Tempranillo to compare the quailties of this not so common grapes.

45 + 1/12

This past weekend we celebrated Lynn's one more month as a 45er. John Dory and hake were the stars of the weekend.

For such a special occasion we chose the 2007 harvest of both Colet-Navazos and Pierro. For me it was an adequate reintroduction to life down under, the way it happened back in 2007.

carrilleras

Improvisation time was a minor part of the CherPhen tour, but it still counted for very nice food, most of it in a rather traditional way. 

pintxos

Last week we had our share of pintxos, mainly in Donostia. Gildas were always there, in different sizes and shapes, but it was some sort of common element.

liquid paris and beyond

The recent trip to Paris came with a number of alcoholic discoveries, which for the most part were worth the effort. 

Obviously we could not miss some bubbles, which had to be from Champagne.