Wine & Culinary Tour

This morning we leave CJ and Kristin Brown in Sevilla as we head back to Lisboa. We originally thought this was going to be a 7 hour drive. It turned out to be much shorter only about 4 1/2 hours so that enabled us to have from 5pm onwards to continue shopping in Lisboa. Our bus driver Jorge was amazing, getting that huge bus to turn on a dime and through the tiniest of streets.

Most of the tour went back to the fancy Amoreiras shopping center that was 5 minutes walking to our hotel.http://www.amoreiras.com/ Paddy and I lost Cindy and June so I went on the mike to page Cindy. In my best british accent, I page Cindy Findlay to the information booth. Not once, but twice. Apparantly everyone but Cindy heard my page.

Paddy and I stopped in at the Ritz Carleton-Four Seasons hotel for a cocktail before going home. BEAUTIFUL hotel and drinks were only 14 Euros each, at least they provided us with some olives and peanuts for that price. We would have stayed for dinner but Paddy didn't a dinner jacket.

Last night of the trip and people scattered to enjoy their final evening of the tour. It was another grand trip and the question on everyone's lips was: Where are we going next year?

Enroute to Sevilla, we convince Manuela to make our stop at the Cork museum located in the Moorish capital of Silves. The cork museum is located within an old fabrication building "the Fabrico do Ingles" and houses all these archaic pieces of cork making machines. The building had a very large outdoor interior courtyard with many orange trees. There were signs everywhere "don't eat the oranges"...not sure why. THe interesting part of cork history is that it's primary purpose was not just for wine bottles, but for all other kinds of products as a stopper. We were able to take a piece of cork bark with the the extruded holes (corks).

After the cork museum, most of the tour walked up the stairs to the outlook at the cathedral for a great view of the town before the sky opened up. I did not and saved myself from getting soaked.

We get into Sevilla in time to change and get ready to go to dinner and another show - this time Flamenco! http://http://www.elpatiosevillano.com/ Next to bull fighting, this is as spanish as you can get. The show took about 2 hours and there were various shapes and sizes of dancers and the energy level was INTENSE. Both men and women were dancing separately and together in traditional costumes. (The next day it became very apparant how many flamenco stores were in this city)

Ah good day for a break after all that travelling. It really is hard to believe that it can be so taxing, but it is. Getting up early, packing, being attentive, tasting wines, listening to foreign languages and being on your best behavior really expends a lot of energy so when the teachers announced that today would be a rest day...we had a resounding HOORAH.

The students, always full of energy, played volleyball, went to the beach, shopped. I sat on a chaise by the pool with June and Cindy and read and kibbutzed. CJ joined us for a bit, she was way more active than me. Paddy was visiting friends.

Dinner was at a fish restaurant and we were going to have a buffet. A served buffet. A 7 course fish buffet. Heads & tails & bones buffet. Needless to say by the last course, thanks to Alex "alice" Peluso, we became pretty adept at deboning our fish. We ate some Portuguese fish that could find no translation, Sea Bream, Sardines, Sea Bass, Baccalhao, Salmon and Squid.

Tomorrow we are off to the Cork museum and Espana!

Today we continue south to the Algarve but enroute we will stop in the region known as Alentejo. This region has many cork and olive trees, of which we will have seen thousands. I didnot photograph any this time around. The signage in this part of the country is very very small, as a matter of fact we zipped past the tiny sign indicating the winery before realizing we had to double back about 15 minutes to find the place which was in fact on the other side of the road, under a bridge and down a goat/shee path.

Finally finding the winery or "adega" called Malhadinha, we stop for a tour and tasting. WOW! Paolo and his wife and his brother run this little winery with accompanying little hotel and spa and restaurant. This fellow is all about quality, right down to the spieglau tasting glasses, sans stems, in the tasting room. Robert Parker has already bestowed this winery "promising high end winemaker". Malhadinha is a small winery that will only focus on top quality wines with very little production. The children have created the wine labels which are cute and folksy.http://www.malhadinhanova.pt/ing/index2.html

I was in my personal heaven because it was like meeting Jack Cakebread before his Napa winery became very popular...this Paolo will go places with his wine.

After the tasting we continued on to Albufeira which is the tourist spot in the Algarve. It was described as being the Portuguese Mexico and I totally get it. I won't spoil it for anyone reading this, but let's just say Albufeira really doesn't represent Portual in its best light. We were on our own for dinner, so the old farts rented a car and went to Valle de Lobo to eat at the "chicken shack". Actually it was a great restaurant, loosely modeled after Swiss Chalet, that served rotisseried barbque chicken cooked al fresco. The restaurant can seat at least 150 and it has a secondary venue across the street that can hold another 150. Crossing the street to your car can be hazardous to your health, so I would recommend moderate consumption of alcohol.

We decide to leave the next day as a free day before we go out as a group for dinner.

http://www.hoteles-catalonia.com/en/our_hotels/europa/spain/andalucia/sevilla/hotel_catalonia_emperador_trajano/index.jsp

We travel south to Puerto de Santa Maria to visit the bodega Osborne. Through our contacts at PMA I was able to set up a tasting that was WAAAAYYYY better than what the regular plebes would get. Before the tasting began we had a tour through the bodega that ran for what seemed 3 city blocks...there were rows of barrels and the air had a fairly stable relative humidity as we looked closer at the black walls we were reminded that the black was in fact MOULD. Although terribly gross to realize that, it was highly effective. As we moved from location to location in this large cellar, the temperature was extremely even as was the humidity level.

Osborne even had an open ended butt (barrel) to demonstrate what fino (dry) sherry looked like as it was developing. Sherry comes in two main styles, fino and cream (sweet) and what makes the fino so unique was a layer of yeast (flor) that remains along the surface of the sherry. This surface acts as a barrier and the subsequent sherry remains lighter in color and drier in mouth feel. This sherry also retains a characteristic tangy taste.

At our tasting we were offered 5 sherries in total, regular guests offered 2. Osborne provided us with thin strips of serrano ham, course crackers and green olives to act as a vehicle while sampling. We in turn left copies of the Canada book and the apron to say thank you. Not to be outdone, Osborne provided us with a 375ml bottles of fino sherry. Well we had the last laugh, the tour must have spent a fortune in their gift shop.

We return to Sevilla in the afternoon. We get a short tour out to the cathedral before being left to tour the city on our own. The tapas was not quite the same as in northern Spain but delicious none the less. Our hotel was probably a brisk 1/2 hour from the city center, but the shopping along the way made the stroll very pleasant. There certainly appears to be a severe shoe affectation in that part of the world, as every other store is for women's shoes. It almost became a bit creepy.