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What is a culinary and wine cruise? It can mean a number of things. On Windstar Cruises, it means a small ship, 300 passengers with 195 crew (three of whom we knew from our cruise two years ago down the Dalmatian Coast from Venice to Athens – and they remembered us too!). We were on the Wind Surf, the largest sailing vessel in the world but miniscule in relation to the two behemoths we were berthed between when we boarded in Lisbon. Pardon my saying so but going on a ship with 5,000 passengers is my idea of hell. Just getting on and off is a nightmare to me.

The cruise was co-sponsored by the James Beard Foundation and Windstar, their first cruise of this type (they have two more scheduled this year from Lisbon to Dublin and a return voyage). If they are anything like this one, they cannot be beat!

It was billed as having a world class chef and wine expert aboard. That can mean a lot of things including…wine snob. We also were to have three regional wines with each meal – I assumed a two-ounce pour of three wines and you could buy a bottle if you liked one. I assumed wrong! It was all you wanted of anyone, and it started the first night out, not just when we reached Spain two days later. It began with a wine tasting of the three wines we would have later with dinner: Burgan’s Albariño 2014 (an old standby of mine and usually around $14). It is the big cousin of Martin Códax, which is now owned by Gallo; the second was a Rioja Crianza, La Montesa, young and with a slight taste of brambles; last was Finca Villacreces Ribero del Duero. As good as the wines were, these were the lightweights of the trip. The next day was spent at sea as we cruised to Tangiers, Morocco, it’s fifth largest city. The days activities began with a talk on the James Beard Foundation by Kris Moon, director of charitable giving and strategic partnerships of which Windstar is just one. I was so impressed by the foundation that when Kris suggested I join as a professional member I did, especially since they are doing a dinner in Minneapolis in September. This was followed by a culinary class by Michel Nischan, a well-known chef, who showed us amazing ways to cook fish that even fish-haters loved. Also aboard was Michael Sabourin, Windstar’s corporate chef.

Next came the wine seminar and any fears I had of a ‘wine snob’ were immediately alleviated. Our guide was Steve Olson, an amazing man who teaches a course in wine at Cornell University, partners in two restaurants in New York, is a partner in a Mezcal company, Del Maguay, and no it doesn’t have a worm in the bottle! Neither is it harsh and I prefer it to many tequila’s. Steve is not a somme, but he is a sommelier, teaches a class that is for professional bartenders only to be certified which is becoming important in New York…no moves like in Cocktail, just how to mix a perfect drink…isn’t that what WE want? Steve’s experience, after opening two restaurants in the U.S. was in Paris, where I believe he was the first American ever to be hired by Taillevent and allowed to work the floor! Check out his website at akawinegeek.com

We docked early the next morning. with a beautiful view of Tangiers. I had always thought the Casablanca was the one to visit but it is Morocco’s largest city and much of the movie Casablanca was filmed here instead. We took a tour of the old city and the Casbah, which was a huge fortress complete with cannon. The city is multi-denominational with Muslims, Jews, and Christians who all get along. A compromise was reached where the only alcohol is in the old city which appears to work well. Both Barbara Hutton (Poor Little Rich Girl, and the Woolworth heiress who was married nine times each to royalty of different nations), and Malcolm Forbes owned a home here where he celebrated his 90th birthday with a lavish party…died the next year. Make note of that, seniors!

Our guide was Mustafa, in full Muslim dress. He explained many of the traditions and took us through the marketplace. The only flaw was when he steered us to shops where he obviously got a commission. Still it was a great tour and interesting.

In the afternoon, Steve held another wine tasting, this time with Tio Pepé Fino sherry, which I must confess I have not been fond of but found it goes very well with seafood; Trillon, white wine from verdejo grapes in Rueda, close to Ribero del Duero; and a Toro, a red wine (tinto) from along the Douro west of Ribero, called Numanthé. We got underway early so we could pass Gibraltar at sunset which we nearly accomplished. It is a heavily traveled shipping lane so we passed ahead of schedule but at least before it got dark and docked in Malaga following a great dinner and our usual three wine dinner. Spending the night at sea, we docked early the next morning…once again behind two behemoths that beat us to port. Some years ago we had driven from Seville down to Cadíz and along the coast to Malaga where we ate on the beach but never got to see the city because we wanted to see the Andalusian hill towns, all in white before we got to Rondo, home of bullfighting. We were on our way to Grenada to stay at the Alhambra which is incredible if you ever get the chance (Parador de San Francisco). This proved helpful as we didn’t have to take the bus tour there which is over two hours each way. Instead, we roamed Malaga on a tip that the best restaurant there was El Pimpi (I kid you not!). It is a sprawling restaurant with cozy rooms but we chose to eat on the terrace overlooking the Roman amphitheater…spectacular.

The wine tasting after we got underway featured a Rafael Palacios Louro Godello and is like an albariño on steroids, the vines are stressed due to steep granite hillsides , over 100 years old and an elevation of 3,000 feet (note the altitude relative to most other vineyards which are normally below 2,00o feet but this is Spain which is to Europe as Gibraltar is to Spain…a big ROCK!; a Casa Castilio El Molar made from Garnacha; and last a Hacienda Monesterio Crianza, made by mega-producer Protos in Ribero, from 100% tempranillo. Note that all of the wines we tasted are available in the U.S. something Steve made sure of and which was appreciated since what’s the point of finding a wine you like but can’t buy?

Next: Almeira, Cartagena, and the island of Ibiza

TB

©TBOW 2016; all rights reserved

We woke up at 3am and arrived at the Lisbon airport at 5am. Why? Because EasyJet (oxymoron) is anything but easy, requiring you to check in one hour before flight time…that is when they close the window! I was surprised at the number of people headed for Madeira which is 600 miles away and about a hundred off the coast of Africa. It was foggy all the way until we approached the island (there are two others, one small and the other long and a national park). We were met by our driver, Daniel Freitas, who has a large van and runs a taxi service who came highly recommended. We were with him from 8:30am until 6:30pm and we could never have seen all that we did by renting a car or on a tour bus. As we climbed up into the mountains we were in low fog but soon we were above it and it was beautiful. It is one of the most picturesque Mediterranean-climate islands in the world. It has hundreds of miles of hiking paths, many of which require great stamina, but the views are worth it. We drove to the lookout at the top of the second-highest peak on the island…if you hike 9km you can reach the highest which is only 50 meters higher.

There are 360 degrees of fantastic views. Daniel pointed out some small houses in a valley surrounded by towering peaks that are almost vertical. That is the Valley of the Nuns, he said, but said we are going to the other end of it. We then drove down roads with switchbacks and steep cliffs and when  we arrived the lookout of the south end of that valley was unbelievable…probably 1,000 feet below us. To get to the town from the other end is a two hour walk. These are rugged people who happen to live in a paradise.

There are surprisingly good highways around the perimeter of the island and beautiful bays. He took us to a restaurant that cooked meat on hot fires and made them into something like kebobs. The tables had a square hole in the center and they brought the skewers to the table and hung them on hooks on a rod that fit into the hole. A plate was placed below them to catch the drippings. You just took your fork and pushed down on a square of incredible beef and put it on your plate. Everything there was fantastic including a view of the ocean over the town.

From there we visited Henriques y Henriques, a Madeira company established in 1850 with a solid reputation and excellent Madeira’s. Madeira is placed in hot rooms which, unlike Port, pasteurizes it, making the wine last indefinitely both in the bottle and unopened. You can find Madeira’s back to the 1800’s…and priced accordingly but despite the song that lent the title to this piece, are not for old ladies’s. The one’s to use for cooking are at least Sercial, and for drinking Bual or Fine Malmsey. You can find young ones for around $20 a bottle and worth it!

We then visited The Madeira Wine Company where Blandy’s and many other labels are made. It is a very commercial yet old feeling setting, highlighted by the Madeira’s.

Saving the best for last, Daniel drove us past the tram to the top of the mountain (just normal sky ride gondola’s), for something I had wanted to do since I was a kid and saw Around the World in 80 Days! The toboggan ride which has been billed by some magazines as ‘the best five-minute commute in the world’! …and it is. You sit in a basket with a seat that is made for two and is on wooden skids…then two men wearing white shirts and pants, and black sashes with straw hats give you a healthy push down the hill and then jump on the back of the skids and using one foot each, steer the toboggan down the hill. It isn’t scary but it is certainly fun. 25 euros for one person, 30 for two and well worth it. I used my camera phone to film it and it is fun to view.

We arrived back at the airport again having to check-in an hour before the flight. The amazing thing is the original runway had a ramp built in to extend the surface and was billed as the second most dangerous airport in the world. A plane crash by an airline pilot who didn’t use common sense caused them to extend the runway on the land side to accommodate the newer and larger jets…but there still isn’t a lot of runway left at the end.

A final comment on EasyJet, which is the low cost provider, but makes up for it in others ways: the seats are crammed in so close that they made them unable to recline. More importantly, they don’t even give you water on the plane unless you pay 3 euros for it.  Most airlines want you to drink all you want to keep hydrated. but not this one. Also, the drink prices are so high that from the time they start the drink service it only takes about five minutes to cover the entire plane! Nobody buys anything. Then they spend the rest of the trip trying to sell you over-priced duty-free items…we saw few takers on that. I didn’t have to use the restroom but quipped that there was probably a 1 euro coin slot on the door!

We arrived back at our hotel in Lisbon at 12:30am, exhausted but wouldn’t have omitted the excursion for anything in the world. FYI, Daniel charged us 160 euros which we felt was a great deal…and got a nice tip too!

TB

©TBOW 2016; all rights reserved

 

We left Rias Baíxas in the morning taking a short drive into Portugal and got off the highway at Guimarães and taking a winding road over the mountain (needlessly since the GPS was showing us the shortest route when we could have driven directly to Pinhão on a better road and backtracked a couple of miles, as the owner of the inn we stayed at told us, adding “never use a GPS here”), with switchbacks all the way but breathtaking views straight down the wall to the terraces of vines for Port.

We stayed two nights at Casa do Visconde de Chanceleiros, once the home of a Viscount and built in the early 1700’s with incredible views, and some casitas which we stayed in. Great hospitality, and incredible views and food. In Pinhão, we toured La Quinta do Bomfim, home of Dow’s, Warres, and Graham’s Port. It is still owned by the Symington family which was in textiles until a son took a liking to Port Wine. The Brits get credit for Port though, by adding brandy to it which upped the alcohol and stopped the fermentation, preserving the sweetness, which must be done 36 hours after fermentation starts. Originally, all the port was shipped on Barca’s down the Douro River which was very treacherous especially when loaded with barrels of wine. The destination was the Port lodges in Oporto. As in Bordeaux, originally the Brits shipped the barrels (or pipes) to England and bottled the wine there. Wealthy families would buy a pipe (about 60 cases) of Vintage Port of the year a child was born or, since not every year is vintage, the nearest vintage, assuring they would have the port for the rest of their life.

Eventually, the Symington family bought out all the companies now owned as well as some more. The Douro Valley is one of the worst places to grow grapes in the world (although as you will soon see, Spain is a contender in several regions), with schist layers that cause the roots to go down as much as 20 meters to take water from the rock. All the rain comes in a few months followed by blistering hot summers. Thus the grapes are stressed adding to their complexity. Originally, the grapes were collected and stomped by foot which was followed by a huge celebration. Today, the only one that still does it that way is Quinta do Vesuvio, also owned by the Symington’s. The crushing was done in stone or cement troughs  called lagares, about two feet high and about 12 feet square. It is now done by machine – the wineries have adapted their own and patented them in a manner that matches the way the feet would stomp them…they even have an arched foot at the bottom to get it as close to the real thing as possible. This is no joke as a human foot is gentle enough to squeeze out the juice without breaking the seeds which would add bitter flavors to the wine.

There are several degrees of Port from Ruby, the youngest and as the name implies reddest, Tawny, which is aged 10, 20, years or more, Late Bottled Vintage which remains in cask until bottled years later, and Vintage Port which surprisingly only spend two years in barrel with the real aging to be done in the bottle. Thus they throw of a sediment and must be drunk within a couple of days whereas other ports can stay open for several weeks without oxidizing.

My favorites are 10 year or older Tawny Ports or Late Bottled Vintage Ports (my wife bought be a bottle of Niepoiort from my birth year, 1944 for my 50th birthday.

The cellar room is incredibly large with large casks for Ruby’s and smaller ones for Tawny’s and Vintage Ports. Architects still visit the Quinta to learn how the 9 ton roof is supported with a series of trusses. At the tasting I chose a selection of Tawny’s: Dow’s 30 year-old; Graham’s 40 year-old, and a Graham’s 1972 Single Harvest. The costs of these bottlings is in order: 30 euros, 120 euros, and 250 euros. At 30 euros for the tasting it was an incredible value.

Later that afternoon we visited Sandeman’s which is much more commercialized. Until a few years ago the only tours were at the Port Lodges in Vila Nova da Gaia, across the river from Oporto. Now you are encouraged to travel to Pinhão. While I highly recommend this I also suggest taking the three-hour train ride. The station is just a couple of blocks from Quinta do Bonfim (Estate or Country Villa of the Good Ending).

A short walk from our lodging was Quinta do Infantado, a winery that has been in Joâm Roseira’s family since 1816 making this the 200th year. I talked with him for over an hour. They were a factor in getting the law changed so that the growers could produce their own Port which they accomplished in 1986. Port growers are paid more for their grapes due to the low yield than any place in the world, over 1,000 euros a ton, however there are several thousand vineyards many of them as small as a backyard and to wait an entire year for that is not enough to sustain a family. He is now one of the best Port producers from his 60 hectares (150 acres), which is sprawled over the hillside. He is very proud of his vineyard and done what he can to further the cause of Portuguese winemakers. As much as I liked his Port, the one I bought was a red table wine because it was unique. He is an amazing man.

After two wonderful days there, we drove along the Douro to the highway to Lisbon. It is a beautiful area and we hated to leave it.

Arriving in Lisbon in the late afternoon, we found our hotel which was just two blocks from the Institute of Port Wine which is a great place to enjoy Port (both red and white), in a club atmosphere. If you do this however, go across the street for an incredible view of the old town and the Tagus River. They sell Sangria there…one of the best I have ever had and musicians abound playing everything from Bossa Nova to Fado. A wonderful place to spend an afternoon. There are seven hills in Lisbon (like San Francisco and Rome), and I think I climbed all of them.

Since we had been to Lisbon before we had a nice dinner after turning in our rental car, and turned in early after having some Port. We had to be up at 3am to go to the airport for our flight to Madeira the next morning.

Trader Bill

©Copyright 2016 TBOW, all rights reserved.

I fully intended to write while I was gone but due to the fast pace I was just too busy and/or tired at the end of the day to write. So I will go about finishing reporting on the trip over the next several days. Here are the topics:

Vol2 No 12…the Douro Valley and Lisbon

Vol 2 No 13…have some Madeira my dear…

Vol 2 No 14…Lisbon and embarking on the Wind Surf for Tangiers and the Med

Vol 2 No 15…Sketches of Spain…the Costa del Sol

Vol 2 No 16…Ibiza…don’t go there after dark!!!

Vol 2 No 17…Monserrat and Sitges…rhymes with beaches and there are many!

Vol 2 No 18…Montsant and Priorat…red, red wine

That should keep TB busy for the rest of the month bringing back fond memories!

Adios!

TB

©Copyright 2016 TBOW, all rights reserved.

 

 

 

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Spanish love ‘x’s. In  the Basque country ‘x’ is pronounced ‘ch’. Okay why don’t they just call their delicious white wine Chocoli instead of Txocoli? …and why isn’t Rías Baixis spelled like it is pronounced? Ree-us Bay-shus? Again, dunno. What TB does know is he has had some wonderful wines on the trip so far and the trip isn’t even one-third over!

Every wine we have had has been at the least very nice. We have had Ribero del Duero Tinto (red), and a fine white from Pesqúera, some fine Toro Tinta’s (red), lovely Rueda’s (don’t buy unless it says Verdejo on the label). Lastly, a great white, Albariño, that is one of favorite whites and propels seafood to another level.

If you go into a restaurant you will not see the name wineries on the list (except perhaps their cheapest red). But all are priced in the range of 12-18 Euro’s, and worth it and more. You have to go to a bodega or wine shop for the best names yet most can be found in the 20-25 Euro range (currently about $1.15).

We drove in fog and rain mostly, from Valbuena in Ribero to a small fishing village called Camariñas on one of the many small peninsula’s on Spain’s ‘death coast’, so named for the many shipwrecks caused by rounding the corner too soon. The inn was called Rustica and was built in 1713. The owner has restored the inn beautifully and it has just seven gorgeous rooms. It took three years and I have no idea how many Euros to rebuild it from near rubble. We used this as a base to explore and despite the light rain (heavier at night,thankfully), we drove down to Finisterra (Lands End), and saw the end of ‘camino’ at what was then thought to be the end of the earth. While it is the westernmost point in Spain it is beaten as the westernmost in Europe by the southwestern corner of Portugal, which we visited years ago.

On Sunday (appropriately) we drove to Santiago de Compostella and arrived just before the mass began in the beautiful cathedral. It is mobbed, unlike any other I have been in in Europe. After walking among the pilgrims who just completed walking ‘the Camino’ from St. Jean-Pied-a-Port, we drove to Pontevedre and had a great lunch outside a little restaurant on one of the little squares that dot the city. It was fun  and being a Sunday, families were everywhere and the little kids held sway. From there we drove to our 1729 inn in de Cobres, near Villaboa. It is charming and is our second day here. We visited several Pazo’s (a Galician term for a large farm house where wine is made).

Tomorrow we will drive to Portugal to visit the beautiful and grand, Douro River valley, much more impressive than the tiny Duero that meanders through Spain before carving a huge swath across Portugal and the source of Port, Dâo, and  Vino Verde (which is made from the same Albariño grape  here it is called Albarinho or Vino Verde, but not the same quality.

If you think you know Spanish, it is probably Mexican Spanish and while helpful, won’t get you much farther than English will.But fret not, the Galicians, like the rest of Spain will make you feel comfortable.and make you feel good about yourself.

Next post will be from Portugal!

TB

©Copyright 2016 TBOW, all rights reserved.