Canarias

Dear friends and family,

Greetings from Tenerife!  Tenerife is one of the Canary Islands, an autonomous region of Spain west of north Africa.  It is one of the largest of the group of islands and certainly the tallest, with Mt. Teide (pronounced TAYday), a volcano, situated in the middle.  We are about 300 miles west of Africa.

Guiseppe and I are here with a large group on a business/pleasure type trip and staying on the southwest part of the island at a placed called the Abama Resort.  The above photo is a view of the hotel and the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the most interesting things that we did on this trip was visit a banana plantation.  We walked through the tremendous plant trees and learned about how bananas are exported.  Since Spain cannot compete with banana exports from Central and South America, they decided to grow a different type of banana species which is smaller and sweeter than what Americans are accustomed to seeing.  The above picture depicts a flowering banana bunch.  The big red thing below is the flower.  It self pollinates as banana plants are asexual.

We even had dinner on the plantation and the wine of the night was a Rioja from Bodegas Palacio called Glorioso.  The term crianza refers to the amount of time with oak contact according to Spanish wine laws and in this case it was a year.  Historically in Spain, American oak has been used in riojas, not French oak.  Why?  Because of the favorable Spanish/American relations in our shared history.  Nowadays though it is more common to see French oak used in Spanish winemaking as the worldwide trend is towards French barrels.  Such is the case now with Glorioso as well.  The grape used is tempranillo ('temp ran EE o'), which is Spain's answer to cabernet sauvignon.  The wine was youthful, had flavors of red cherries and other red fruits, hints of vanilla (from the oak), a long finish and quite pleasant.  While it is not readily available for sale in the US, at less than USD$5 a bottle, it's a steal and terrific to serve for large groups, like ours.  Too bad the dinner itself wasn't so tasty, so Guiseppe and I conversed our way through the dinner with our hosts, which was fine by us.

The weather overall has been quite pleasant.  We're having a great time and will be home soon.

Love, Jennifer

Links:
http://www.abamahotelresort.com/
http://www.bodegaspalacio.com/bodegas-palacio_eng/nuestros-vinos/listado-de-familias-marca/ficha_tecnica.aspx?id=11550

Spanish wines

Sorry for the hiatus there.  I spent a glorious week in Spain -- Barcelona and Marbella to be exact.  How wonderful it was.

The weather in Barcelona wasn't the best, but it was just fine for sightseeing.  My dear friend, Brenda, was my date for the week and we did all things Gaudi -- Park Guell, Parc de Montjuic, La Sagrada Familia, Casa Batllo, La Pedrera.  We also had a chance to see the Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter, where the Picasso Museum is located and the famous Mercat de la Boqueria, the big food market.  There we had tapas, the little nibbles of everything imaginable over a glass of wine and to sit down.  We decided to picking a stall with no tourists there and ordered fried baby calamari and freshly fried anchovies.  Not fishy in the least.  It was just wonderful.

Two days later, we flew on an Air Europa flight to Malaga on the Costa de Sol and stayed in Marbella, home to Julio Iglesias and other rich and famous folk.  I've visited this part of the world before and loved it.  This time, I had a contact.  Met a wonderful woman named Peta from a previous trip in Vietnam.  She's half Burmese and half English.  Her husband is Cuban.  She's a retired dancer and her husband, Gil, a retired singer.  Peta took the time from her busy tennis schedule to meet up with Brenda and me.  Took us around Marbella and Puerto Banus, a neighboring seaside town.  Marbella is Palm Beach with old money and Puerto Banus is home to the new monied set.  There were more Lamborghinis and Ferraris on the road in this town than there were Renaults!  It was quite a sight.  Most of the property listings for sale -- the extremely large homes -- were not in Spanish nor English, rather in Russian. 

Other day trips included Gibraltar and the famous 'rock'.  We also Grenada and the famous Alhambra.  I've always wanted to see the Alhambra, a former sultan's palace and a fine example of Moorish architecture.  It was more beautiful than I ever could have imagined it to be that I became emotional.  From there, our driver, Stefan, took us 3 hours across to Sevilla, where the Feria d'Abril, a famous festival of heavy drinking, dancing till the small hours, and daily bullfights.  The average woman dons a flamenco outfit and the men in their suits and take them around in horse drawn carriages.  What a sight to behold.  Then it was flamenco shows at night.  We didn't have much time to sunbathe.  Oh well, we can do that this summer. 

But what about the food and drink?  We ate seafood and wine for lunch and dinner every day!  It was heavenly.  Some days, it was regular table wine and the others were more estate bottled reds and whites.  You see, Spain is one of the larger wine producing nations, so in their minds, wine is a food, as it is for me.  Table wine, which is the lowest category in the wine pyramid, was lovely.  Brenda, a food technologist (aka: food inventor), felt that the standards of food were much higher in Spain than the US, thus accounting for the high quality of even the lowest food products.  I had to agree.  Despite eating as well as we did, we both managed to shed a few pounds from the trip!  My gosh, at this rate, we should vacation more often together!

Thanks girlfriend!