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.