After I completed my article on Málaga wine, I was still left with the nagging question, was there really a vino de jamón, a ham wine? Other possibilities presented themselves. Could ham wine be an urban myth? How about a practical joke on a guileless foreigner, or maybe even the combined product of murmured Spanish and waxy ears? Who knew? Only one way to find out.
Into the field, to the campo, on our quest. It wasn’t the Holy Grail, but we didn’t have to go all the way to Jerusalem, either and we could drink some wine instead of fighting Saracens.
With Claud deBretteville as our trusty guide we drove into the hinterlands, hilly land that farmers worked with rototillers to grow sweet grapes for Málaga wine. Our road was paved, but that was its sole virtue. Curving. Not banked very well, you needed both hands on the wheel here.
We stopped finally at a small ventorilla, a little restaurant where Claud thought they might sell some ham wine. A small building with a whitewashed exterior (of course) isolated from any nearby village, it sported the old Coca Cola® sign on the wall. You know the one, red with a big, fancy C. And directly underneath the Coca Cola® sign, embedded into the wall, was a manger and hitching place for a burro. I tell you, this was a full-service ventorilla.
Claud, Joanne and I seated ourselves at an outdoor table in a shady spot and soon a woman came out to ask us what we wanted to eat. We chose a homemade paella and I then asked her if they had any ham wine.
“O sí, señor, of course we have vino de jamón. Why, that is our specialty. How could you ask?” Soon we were sipping on a glass of dark, sweetish liquid that tasted vaguely like some wheat beers.
Shortly after our wine was served the same lady returned to our table holding a large grey hen. She extended the bird to Joanne. She asked that la señora approve the day’s entrée.
While we no longer bougtht our meat pre-packaged in a Styrofoam® box and sealed with Saranwrap®, we were used to at least having the animal dead and hanging from a hook in the carnecería. It was quite out of the ordinary to inspect our own dinner while it still clucked. Still, after Joanne realized what was being requested, she made a great show of touching the legs and breast before signifying her approval.
The woman nodded agreeably and went about twenty feet away where she wrung the bird’s neck, whirling her arm round and round several times like a berserk windmill. It looked spectacular, but it did a quick and apparently merciful job on our chicken dinner.
Soon the woman set herself to plucking the bird and gutting the bird and dismembering the bird. Four or five admiring dogs surrounded her and snagged various pieces and scraps of unspeakable and probably unidentifiable stuff as they flew through the air. Claud, Joanne and I concentrated grimly on our wine.
In an hour or so, she presented us with a fine paella that we enjoyed greatly. With more wine. But as we drove away, I reflected on the country sense of humor. It is possible the woman could have gone to the kitchen and yelled out, “Hey, Carlos, we’ve got another one asking for ham wine. Third one this week. Three glasses of dishwater, please. Thanks.”
Lookout published my article and a British lady wrote me afterwards to say that, yes, indeed, it was really true, there was a ham wine actually, and it tasted very much as I’d described. But I still wonder, could she have been another part of a vast Spanish conspiracy?
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Malaga Wine
Lookout Magazine, the English language magazine for the Costa del Sol, assigned me an article on Málaga wine. To be frank, I didn’t think much of Málaga wine. Or Spanish wine of any type, including their famous dry sherry. Come to think of it, I don’t much care for wine even today.
So, why me? Why did I get the assignment? Simply put, the editor needed the article and I needed the income. Freelancers can’t be choosers.
Armed with the assignment, I began to visit the bodegas (wine bars) around Torremolinos. There were some good points. The drinks were cheap. The bodegas had ambiance. The bartender filled your glass directly from one of the barrels behind the bar. Neatest of the neat, you could take your own jug to the bodega and they filled it for you.
But one day I saw a tanker parked outside a bodega. Huge hoses connected the tanker to the barrels. I wondered if the wine had ever seen a grape, or was it the liquid product of some chemical plant in Asturias or Extremadura.
We visited several local wineries. Our first was a combination bottling plant and retail sales outlet. The owner showed me barrels of wine, the oldest holding 20-year-old batch he called la madre, the mother. As new wine came in, it would be decanted into barrels with a little la madre mixed in. After it sat and mellowed for a while, it would then be mixed with more new wine. After four or five years, you had a wine with a little, a very little, madre.
All Málaga wines came from the Pero Ximen (Pedro Ximénes) grape. It was processed in different ways and came in several different flavors. Their chief virtue is a high alcohol content. Málaga Dulce, Lagrima del Cristo, and, most impressive of all, Vino Quino, a special mixture of Málaga wine and quinine, all come from this grape. Vino Quino is supposed to be a curative, but if you aren’t ill, it was a sure fire sickative.
When for sheer nastiness, Vino Quino was right up there with Cynar®, a wine I first sampled at an American Club meeting. They make it from artichokes. I can’t think why.
On another occasion Joanne, our daughter Pat and I were doing some firewater experiments in downtown Málaga. (We let Pat have some wine with lots and lots of water in it.) Pat and Joanne were both coming down with the flu and Pat returned home on the bus while Joanne and I remained behind and killed the bottle. The next day Pat was so sick with the flu that she was bedridden for a week. Her self-winding watch stopped. It’s kind of like if your votive candle goes out. You wonder how much time you have left. Joanne, on the other hand, felt fine. Here’s another cure for the flu. Perhaps we need a government study.
On another occasion we visited a bottling plant that actually had vats of frothing must. “Must.” That’s what they call squeezed grapes, with the seeds and skins not removed with a nasty looking froth floating on top. The plant was surrounded by high walls, the tops of which were lined with broken glass. That kept thieves and tax assessors out unless they wanted to give themselves appendectomies.
The plant manager spoke English with a heavy German accent. I asked him which wine he favored. “I only drink Scotch,” he replied austerely. There we go, folks. Suspicions Confirmed.
Somewhere in my peregrinations trying to nail down this story, one purveyor of fine Málaga bubbly used the phrase “ham wine,” vino del jamón. That’s funny, I thought to myself. I thought my Spanish was getting pretty good, but I would have sworn he said “ham wine.” But that’s exactly what he said.
Sometimes a farmer will have a batch of wine that isn’t quite up to snuff, and also have a Serrano ham that doesn’t quite make the grade either. A Serrano ham is cured on the snowy slopes in the mountains near Madrid. When it is cured, it is purple. I’ve seen these hams hanging in bars and when you ask for a tapa they slice it microchip thin. It’s very expensive and people put them on layaway for Christmas. Another thing, when they hang in the bars they didn’t draw flies. Curiouser and curiouser..
Anyway, you make ham wine by throwing a sub par Serrano ham into your vat of not very good wine and, after about six months, you withdraw the bone, all that is left of the ham, and enjoy the fruits of your curious chemistry project.
But I didn’t know if I really believed the story. It could have been an urban myth or a national put on. I resolved to make a field trip into the campo and see for myself. And thereby hangs the next tale.
So, why me? Why did I get the assignment? Simply put, the editor needed the article and I needed the income. Freelancers can’t be choosers.
Armed with the assignment, I began to visit the bodegas (wine bars) around Torremolinos. There were some good points. The drinks were cheap. The bodegas had ambiance. The bartender filled your glass directly from one of the barrels behind the bar. Neatest of the neat, you could take your own jug to the bodega and they filled it for you.
But one day I saw a tanker parked outside a bodega. Huge hoses connected the tanker to the barrels. I wondered if the wine had ever seen a grape, or was it the liquid product of some chemical plant in Asturias or Extremadura.
We visited several local wineries. Our first was a combination bottling plant and retail sales outlet. The owner showed me barrels of wine, the oldest holding 20-year-old batch he called la madre, the mother. As new wine came in, it would be decanted into barrels with a little la madre mixed in. After it sat and mellowed for a while, it would then be mixed with more new wine. After four or five years, you had a wine with a little, a very little, madre.
All Málaga wines came from the Pero Ximen (Pedro Ximénes) grape. It was processed in different ways and came in several different flavors. Their chief virtue is a high alcohol content. Málaga Dulce, Lagrima del Cristo, and, most impressive of all, Vino Quino, a special mixture of Málaga wine and quinine, all come from this grape. Vino Quino is supposed to be a curative, but if you aren’t ill, it was a sure fire sickative.
When for sheer nastiness, Vino Quino was right up there with Cynar®, a wine I first sampled at an American Club meeting. They make it from artichokes. I can’t think why.
On another occasion Joanne, our daughter Pat and I were doing some firewater experiments in downtown Málaga. (We let Pat have some wine with lots and lots of water in it.) Pat and Joanne were both coming down with the flu and Pat returned home on the bus while Joanne and I remained behind and killed the bottle. The next day Pat was so sick with the flu that she was bedridden for a week. Her self-winding watch stopped. It’s kind of like if your votive candle goes out. You wonder how much time you have left. Joanne, on the other hand, felt fine. Here’s another cure for the flu. Perhaps we need a government study.
On another occasion we visited a bottling plant that actually had vats of frothing must. “Must.” That’s what they call squeezed grapes, with the seeds and skins not removed with a nasty looking froth floating on top. The plant was surrounded by high walls, the tops of which were lined with broken glass. That kept thieves and tax assessors out unless they wanted to give themselves appendectomies.
The plant manager spoke English with a heavy German accent. I asked him which wine he favored. “I only drink Scotch,” he replied austerely. There we go, folks. Suspicions Confirmed.
Somewhere in my peregrinations trying to nail down this story, one purveyor of fine Málaga bubbly used the phrase “ham wine,” vino del jamón. That’s funny, I thought to myself. I thought my Spanish was getting pretty good, but I would have sworn he said “ham wine.” But that’s exactly what he said.
Sometimes a farmer will have a batch of wine that isn’t quite up to snuff, and also have a Serrano ham that doesn’t quite make the grade either. A Serrano ham is cured on the snowy slopes in the mountains near Madrid. When it is cured, it is purple. I’ve seen these hams hanging in bars and when you ask for a tapa they slice it microchip thin. It’s very expensive and people put them on layaway for Christmas. Another thing, when they hang in the bars they didn’t draw flies. Curiouser and curiouser..
Anyway, you make ham wine by throwing a sub par Serrano ham into your vat of not very good wine and, after about six months, you withdraw the bone, all that is left of the ham, and enjoy the fruits of your curious chemistry project.
But I didn’t know if I really believed the story. It could have been an urban myth or a national put on. I resolved to make a field trip into the campo and see for myself. And thereby hangs the next tale.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
More Granada
Skiing
The next day Joanne and Pat climbed into El Flojo and set out for the ski resort in the mountains. Eric and I, in a rare moment of sanity, realized that we might not have a very good time at the resort since we couldn’t ski. Pat and Joanne couldn’t ski, either, but it was all downhill, right? And there were people who gave lessons, right? What could be so hard about that?
Off they chugged into the mountains. It was a pale, sunny day with intermittent clouds in Granada. Winter sunlight. But in the mountains the weather worsened. Snow flurries showed up and slick roads. But, thanks to the magic of front wheel drive, El Flojo came through.
Joanne and Pat spent much of their morning and early afternoon on the bunny slope mastering certain techniques calculated to help them maintain verticality. Then they took the chair lift to the top of the slope, intending to enjoy the view and ride the same lift back down to the resort. But the wind came up to foil their plans. Management shut the chair lift down and they had to go down by the inelegant but aptly named “snow plow.”
There’s great truth to the old proverb: It’s all downhill from the top of the chair lift.
The Alhambra
Meanwhile, having no ski slope to confound us, Eric and I decided to visit the Alhambra, a combination palace-citadel and the residence of Boabdil, the last Moorish ruler in Spain, expelled in 1492. We found all kinds of stuff there, chambers, baths, a mosque. I’ve got to admit that much of what I saw was lost on me. I can take only so many arcades, fountains and reflecting pools before my architecturally uninformed psyche ODs.
But the gardens, now, they were something else. Immaculate. No twigs, no leaves. The hedges lined the walkways with angular symmetry, each leaf standing abreast with its neighbor with military precision. “Dad,” Eric said, “you can’t tell me those hedges weren’t trimmed with a machine.” At just that moment we turned a corner and discovered a Spanish gardener carefully snipping privet leaves with a pair of scissors.
We had not seen very many power tools at the Alhambra. Then we thought of how Rafa, the man of all work at Sunnyview School, mowed the lawn. With scissors. Fortunately, it was a small lawn, so it only took him two days. After that recollection, the gardener at the Alhambra didn’t seem quite so very strange. Just a little strange.
The Luthiers
The day after Eric and I visited the Alhambra and Joanne and Pat exerted themselves so valiantly on the ski slopes, we decided to return to Torremolinos. But first we decided to visit a few luthiers. I played a little guitar, mostly like a bass drum, but I could do a little finger picking. I thought I might like a flamenco guitar.
The flamenco guitar is expressly designed to play Flamenco music. Now there’s a news flash for you. It is lighter and a little smaller than a classical guitar and has a more percussive sound to it. It has a tap plate for the Flamenco guitarist to tap his fingers, a part of the playing technique.
I could get a very good handmade flamenco guitar, quite playable, for $200.00, quite a lot of money in 1974. But there would have been an eight-month waiting period. I didn’t buy one because I could never have been able to do justice to the instrument and certainly never match the standards of the players I had been listening to in Granada.
But as we left, I felt good about a city where luthiers were backordered eight months and could make a good living.
The next day Joanne and Pat climbed into El Flojo and set out for the ski resort in the mountains. Eric and I, in a rare moment of sanity, realized that we might not have a very good time at the resort since we couldn’t ski. Pat and Joanne couldn’t ski, either, but it was all downhill, right? And there were people who gave lessons, right? What could be so hard about that?
Off they chugged into the mountains. It was a pale, sunny day with intermittent clouds in Granada. Winter sunlight. But in the mountains the weather worsened. Snow flurries showed up and slick roads. But, thanks to the magic of front wheel drive, El Flojo came through.
Joanne and Pat spent much of their morning and early afternoon on the bunny slope mastering certain techniques calculated to help them maintain verticality. Then they took the chair lift to the top of the slope, intending to enjoy the view and ride the same lift back down to the resort. But the wind came up to foil their plans. Management shut the chair lift down and they had to go down by the inelegant but aptly named “snow plow.”
There’s great truth to the old proverb: It’s all downhill from the top of the chair lift.
The Alhambra
Meanwhile, having no ski slope to confound us, Eric and I decided to visit the Alhambra, a combination palace-citadel and the residence of Boabdil, the last Moorish ruler in Spain, expelled in 1492. We found all kinds of stuff there, chambers, baths, a mosque. I’ve got to admit that much of what I saw was lost on me. I can take only so many arcades, fountains and reflecting pools before my architecturally uninformed psyche ODs.
But the gardens, now, they were something else. Immaculate. No twigs, no leaves. The hedges lined the walkways with angular symmetry, each leaf standing abreast with its neighbor with military precision. “Dad,” Eric said, “you can’t tell me those hedges weren’t trimmed with a machine.” At just that moment we turned a corner and discovered a Spanish gardener carefully snipping privet leaves with a pair of scissors.
We had not seen very many power tools at the Alhambra. Then we thought of how Rafa, the man of all work at Sunnyview School, mowed the lawn. With scissors. Fortunately, it was a small lawn, so it only took him two days. After that recollection, the gardener at the Alhambra didn’t seem quite so very strange. Just a little strange.
The Luthiers
The day after Eric and I visited the Alhambra and Joanne and Pat exerted themselves so valiantly on the ski slopes, we decided to return to Torremolinos. But first we decided to visit a few luthiers. I played a little guitar, mostly like a bass drum, but I could do a little finger picking. I thought I might like a flamenco guitar.
The flamenco guitar is expressly designed to play Flamenco music. Now there’s a news flash for you. It is lighter and a little smaller than a classical guitar and has a more percussive sound to it. It has a tap plate for the Flamenco guitarist to tap his fingers, a part of the playing technique.
I could get a very good handmade flamenco guitar, quite playable, for $200.00, quite a lot of money in 1974. But there would have been an eight-month waiting period. I didn’t buy one because I could never have been able to do justice to the instrument and certainly never match the standards of the players I had been listening to in Granada.
But as we left, I felt good about a city where luthiers were backordered eight months and could make a good living.
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