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