Gerry Dawes

Cochinillo asado, roast suckling pig, specialty of the house Casa Botín, an old Hemingway hangout where a major scene in The Sun Also Rises was set, on calle Cuchilleros, old quarter of Madrid. Photograph by Gerry Dawes©2009. Contact: gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook / Twitter. Gerry Dawes, Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel The Spanish Artisan Wine Group - Gerry Dawes Selections

The 53 Best Things We Ate This Year Published in Gourmet Live 12.19.12 Verdinas con Marisco, Heredad de la Cueste Cangas de Onís, Spain Just a few years ago in eastern Asturias in northern Spain, I was introduced to verdinas con marisco, a small, light green, very delicate heirloom flageolet bean from the coastal town of Llanes usually cooked with clams and langostinos (prawns) or shrimp. I have had several dishes of these wonderful, easily digestible beans, including dishes served by chef-owner Seamus Mullen at New York's Tertulia, but in late October I had an excellent version of verdinas con marisco at the spectacular Heredad de la Cueste, which belongs to Jaime Rodríguez and his wife, Marichu, (it was her mother's family home) and was named the top casa rural—country bed-and-breakfast lodging—in Spain in 2011. Jaime had grown the beans and his mother-in-law cooked them with whole small nécoras (velvet swimming crabs) and shrimp. Of all the dishes I ate in Spain this year, verdinas con marisco was my favorite. —Gerry Dawes, author of the blog Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel and founder of The Spanish Artisan Wine Group PHOTO: Gerry Dawes

Patatas a la Riojana, From La Rioja Wine Region, One of the Greatest Folk Dishes of Spain Vicenta Pérez Escarta, owner-chef at Casa Masip in Ezcaray, La Rioja with a pot of patatas a la riojana, one of the greatest folk dishes of Spain.

It can be a lot of fun there--and sometimes you can eat great shellfish there without paying the heavy price at a restaurant. Man enjoying a plate of cigalas (Dublin Bay prawns) by himself at the Mercado de San Miguel. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2009. gerrydawes@aol.com

Jim Budd weighs in on the Nathalie McLean affair from England

Many thanks for your very kind words and support, Don. I wish what you just wrote would get around as fast as this Nathalie McLean thing has. I first read it in an e-mail from Belgium, then I put it on Twitter and Facebook. Since then, I have heard from a top wine writer in New Zealand and the story is now in the hands of a major blogger in England and someone from the Associated Press in Madrid. The point is be it MacLean or Parker or Pancho Campo, missteps get transmitted around the world in the space of a few hours, sometimes minutes. It is not easy to hide these days.

Chestnuts roasting over an open fire. La Castañera, the chestnut roaster, a bronze statue in Burgos, Spain. There are many chestnut roasters selling castaños on the street in the winter in Spain. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2012; gerrydawes@aol.com. Chestnuts roasting over an open fire. In the snow, La Castañera, the chestnut roaster, a bronze statue in Burgos, Spain. There are many chestnut roasters selling castaños on the street in the winter in Spain. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2012; gerrydawes@aol.com. Begoña, street stand in Madrid off the Plaza Mayor, offering roasted maíz (corn), batata (sweet potato) and castañas (chestnuts). "Watch out! They are very hot and they will burn!" Photo Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook & Twitter.

Rafael Vidal's True Paellas Valencianas at Restaurante Levante outside of Valencia. One of Rafael Vidal's true paellas valencianas at Restaurante Levante outside of Valencia. Real paella valenciana has no seafood, it has duck, chicken, pork and two kinds of bean, a flat type of bean called a vaina and a large local Valencian dried bean called a garrofó, which Rafael Vidal grows himself. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2012. Contact gerrydawes@aol.com.

Natalie MacLean: World’s Best Wine Writer or Content Thief? By Palate Press on Dec 15, 2012 "Natalie MacLean is a well-known wine writer who self-publishes a subscription newsletter at NatalieMacLean.com, who proudly proclaims she was named the “World’s Best Wine Writer” at the World Food Media Awards. Unfortunately, Ms. MacLean appears to be building her reputation, and her business, on the work of others. Her website offers a paid “Magnum Membership” that gives readers access to wine reviews. It also generates revenue from advertising. The core of Ms. MacLean’s work is the publication of wine reviews and food and wine pairings. In addition to her own reviews, which are often a sentence or less, Ms. MacLean includes professional wine reviews by writers from other publications. The reviews sometimes include the writer’s name, but never the publication or a link. Rather, they are all accredited to “Vintages Wine Catalogue,” a Liquor Control Board of Ontario publication which runs fully accredited reviews, including author, date, and publication, to drive wine sales, much like any retailer on line or on shelf-talkers. There is a simple phrase for this practice in which Ms, MacLean has engaged – copyright infringement. Just because someone is writing about wine rather than, say, politics or foreign affairs does not absolve him or her from adhering to journalistic ethics. Intellectual property theft is a scourge on journalism and cannot be tolerated." Read the whole story by clicking on the link above.

Some additional photos with plenty of information in the captions on El Mercado de San Miguel, Madrid Friends at a wine bar, one dressed as a "matador" and with their wine glasses nearly empty. El Mercado de San Miguel, Madrid. Photo Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook & Twitter.

Many thanks, Dave, for you kind comments and for following my ramblings. My best, Gerry

Don, do you really think that 95% of people who buy Champagne know what grapes are in it. I do not think the grape composition means much to anyone but hard-core wine aficionados. Disconnect for cava? First Codorniu then and Freixenet now are the largest producers of methode champenoise sparkling wines in the world. (Probably more than 95% of Champagne and cava purchasers do not know what the Hell methode champenoise. As to the primary grapes in Cava, 1) Xarel-lo, 2) Macabeu, 3) Parellada, which I call the "bland brothers trio," I would point out that the best cavas now have some chardonnay or even pinot noir in them, plus cava production is more about the method of production (like Sherry and the white wines of Lopez de Heredia, for instance) than it is any specific grape. Lots of producers in Catalunya made still wines from these cava varieties. There are a few xarel-lo bases wines that can be quite good, but I have never tasted a truly great xarel-lo, let alone a good macabeu (viura) or parellada (which was blended with chardonnay to make Miguel Torres Viña Sol) and yes some of them are available in the States. "Over the past decade or so of sipping cavas in some of Spain's top restaurants and writing about cava for wine publications, it has become increasingly apparent that a number of the country's smaller producers are bottling some absolutely superb sparkling wines. By contrast, not too long ago, Spanish sparkling wine was little more than quaffable, mass-market bubbly widely available at bargain prices. While that still holds true for a large percentage of the staggering ten million-plus cases of Cava exported each year (another eight million-plus cases are consumed in Spain), during the past ten years — hand-in-hand with quality advances on the country's wine and gastronomy fronts — a number of Champagne-quality Cavas from a wide range of producers have emerged. Some of these exceptional wines are vintage dated, prestige brut cuvées; bone-dry, palate-cleansing brut natures (great with shellfish); and an increasingly impressive group of sparkling rosados (rosats in Catalan), some made with pinot noir, others with indigenous varieties such as trepat, monastrell and garnacha." - - Gerry Dawes "While I will be doing a full-fledged feature on Cava in the next issue, I wanted to include notes here on The Spanish Artisan Wine Group’s fine Catalan producer, Jaume Giró et Giró and their excellent label of Can Festis Cava. Like virtually all of the top producers I have tasted in recent months, Jaume Giró et Giró is part of the “Six Percent Club” who own their own vineyards and produce Cava solely from their own grapes. As I will elaborate on in my article on Cava, in my experience, this is one of the fundamental building blocks for producing truly world class Cava, and if one were to simply limit one’s consumption of Cava to producers who grow their own grapes and make their own wines, one could steer clear of disappointingly bland examples and come to appreciate just how beautifully delicate and complex top flight Cava can be from members of this “Six Percent Club”. - - John Gilman in View From The Cellar.

I am off to the city (NYC) today, but I will get to this cava post later this evening or in the morning. Don, I wish you were in NYC today. I am having a tasting lunch at 2 p.m. down in Chelsea.

Damn, Don, I don't remember when I last had 1989 Monte Real. I think I only have a bottle or two of 1964 and maybe a 1973 left. I will say that the 1989 was well before they started messing around with new oak at the beginning of the new century. If it is a Reserva (and not a Gran Reserva, which I doubt in 1989), open a bottle and make your judgement. If it is still drinking great, keep the other one. My guess is that if they are Reservas, they may not keep forever.

Here's a real bombshell: The Robert Parker bombshell By Felix Salmon December 10, 2012 Reuters Excerpts (Italics are by GD): "Today, however, Teague is back, this time in the pages of the WSJ. And it seems very much that Parker has sold the Wine Advocate after all — to a shadowy group of investors in Singapore, no less. What’s more, he’s relinquishing that editorial control as well: he’s “turning over editorial oversight to his Singapore-based correspondent, Lisa Perrotti-Brown”. * * * * * Parker himself will retain the title of Chairman, and will continue to review his beloved Bordeaux and Rhone wines, but none of this seems like the action of a man who wants to preserve his legacy. Robert Parker is the Wine Advocate — and now he’s handing his baby over to a group of people he won’t even name, but who will probably eviscerate everything he stands for? He told Teague he was presented with “a plan he couldn’t refuse”, but I can’t imagine what that might be. He’s never been a profit-maximizer, but he’s managed to become rich all the same; it’s hard to see how a large check alone would have sealed the deal. I suspect that in coming days and weeks there will be further shoes to drop; quite possibly, this deal won’t end up closing at all. But if it does, and if TWA does indeed move to Singapore, then that will only serve to accelerate the backlash against Parker’s palate which has been gathering steam for some time now. What’s bad for TWA could be very healthy for the wine industry as a whole: if it is no longer particularly beholden to one man, it can branch out into making more heterogeneous and individualistic wines. The idea that a 95-point wine is always better than an 85-point wine is an idea which deserves to die. And this deal, with luck, might just hasten its demise." No comment, for now.

Hi, Darkstar, thanks for your comments. (BTW, I looked at the link and the slide show is working for me. On your comment about the late lunches in Spain, finishing lunch in Spain at 6 p.m.+ is not that uncommon. Mark Miller and Gerry Dawes at lunch in The Basque Country. One time, Chef Mark Miller, when he still owed Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe, we traveling in the Basque Country and we raced to get to Kaia, a restaurant in Getaria, about 30 kms. west of San Sebastian, for lunch. This was several years ago and we feared they would be closing the kitchen down. We rolled in after 3:30 p.m. and found the dining only about a third filled. We asked if the kitchen was open. "Si." "Can we have a table by the window overlooking the puerto?" "Let me see, I have to check the reservations list." Mark and I looked at one another and the looks said, "Yeh, right!" "Vale, we can give you that table over there." "Estupendo." Miller and and sat down, ordered some txakoli and house-cured anchovies, which Miller said were some of the best he had ever eaten. By 4 p.m., the restaurant was full. A whole rodaballo (turbot) grilling at Kaia in Getaria. Photo by Gerry Dawes 2005. We then had some grilled sardinas, followed by a whole fire-roasted turbot with a 30-year old Rioja gran reserva tinto (in Spain many people drink red wines with fish, especially in the north central Atlantic coast). Chef Norman Van Aken looks on as a waitperson at Kaia prepares to dissect a fire-roasted whole rodaballo (turbot) at Jatextea (Restaurante) Kaia in Getaria. Photo by Gerry Dawes copyright 2005. Over a snifter of pacharàn* on the rocks and a Montecristo cigar, we plotted our next gastronomic research moves (gastro-research is Hell but somebody has to do it!). By the time we finished lunch, it was nearly 7 p.m., a proper hour we thought. We could have some tapas at 10 p.m. and a light dinner at 10:30 - 11:00 p.m. A bottle of 1964 Monte Real Reserva being decanted at Kaia in Getaria. Photo by Gerry Dawes 2003. A Personal Homage to the Wines of Bodegas Riojanas on the Occasion of Their 115th Anniversary (Entry in the book Bodegas Riojanas published to commemorate that anniversary.) Pacharàn* July 11, Día de Dimasu, Peña Anaitasuna & A Homage to Patxaran (Pacharán)

Darkstar, check this out the Asturias. Day One in Asturias: A Visit to Quesos La Peral Plus Pedro and Son Marcos Morán Demonstrate an Exceptional Talent for Finding the Best Mostly Asturian Products and Turning Them Into Delicious Modernized Traditional Alta Cocina Dishes at Casa Gerardo in Prendes, near Gijón, Asturias, Spain's Stunning Natural Paradise.

Wow! Darkstar, I am very flattered and I greatly appreciate your kind comments. :) :) Check out the Spanish Cheese thread for a new addition that I just posted. There will be more. I also added a post to the thread on, of all things, blood sausage!!

Here is an vignette on a single cheese, Monje Blue, from the Asturias. There will be more vignettes. This one is available in the U.S. through Forever Cheese, I believe. Asturian Journal: March 19, A Visit to Monje, Producer of an Exceptional Cabrales-like Blue Cheese in Panes, Peñamellera Baja (Another excerpt from my article in the summer issue of culture: the word on cheese.) Monje "Blue," a first-rate Cabrales-type cheese from Peñamellera Baja.

Morcilla (Spanish black pudding or blood sausage) with Pimientos (From San Sebastií¡n, Burgos and Madrid Morcilla con arroz a la plancha con pimientos, Rincon de Espana, Burgos, Spain.

Whole Foods also usually has a good selection of Spanish cheese. I found some great ones at Whole Foods in Austin a few years back when I cooked a custom Spanish dinner for eight that was contracted by a friend of mine. If you are interested in Spanish cheeses, have a look at this article I did in Culture: The Word on Cheese magazine: "Discovering Spain´s Hidden cheese treasures in Asturias", an excellent article by Gerry Dawes about cheese from Asturias.CULTURE Magazine. Download the article And this one on the Culinary Institute of America's website: Spanish Artisan Cheeses & Complementing Spanish Wines I buy Spanish olive oil at Trader Joe's, near Danbury, CT at something like $5.99 and I cook with it every night. Gerry Dawes, Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel The Spanish Artisan Wine Group - Gerry Dawes Selections

The Spanish Artisan Wine Group Arrives in US With a Plethora of Low Octane Beauties, View From The Cellar (July-August 2012) by John Gilman, Publisher

I mean no unfairness at all to Neal Martin, who came to review Spanish wines after having been quoted in interviews about how he didn't like Spanish wines and had no interest in them. But, from all I can hear from reports from Spain such as from Galicia, where I just spent a week in Oct.-Nov., Martin is taking Spanish wines seriously and, although he is letting the consejos reguladores (whose power is wielded by the most important commercial producers in each region) set up his visits, the reports I have been getting have been generally positive concerning Martin, not so with his predecessor.

First off, for the sake of full disclosure, John Gilman has twice tasted all the wines from my Spanish Artisan Group selections and gave many of them great reviews in his View From The Cellar (July-August, 2012). I was not surprised that Gilman's reviews were so good, because we have similar palate preferences that run to non-spoofulated wines. In answer to your question about old school Riojas. I see the wineries that still make the so-called "old school" Rioja wines--Lopez de Heredia, La Rioja Alta and Bodegas Riojanas are among the best; Marques de Murrieta, somewhat; CVNE and Marques de Riscal have been making modernized traditional wines for a long time--beginning to promote them up front more aggressively, as they should have been doing all along (Lopez de Heredia never wavered), if they had believed in themselves all along. Ironically, Neal Martin, the new reviewer for Robert Parker's The Wine Advocate just gave several of the "old school" wines glowing reviews (one Rioja Alta wine I saw rated by Martin at 97 points). I say ironically because just a year before Jay Miller went to La Rioja and basically dismissed some spectacular wines from the archives of these "old school" wineries. With Martin's reviews, The Wine Advocate took a total about face and the Spanish wine press had orgasms, but orgasms for the Spanish wine chroniclers are often based on what outside writers have said about the wines and not on the strength of their own convictions. In other words, some writers in Spain are often like La Giralda, the famous statue which tops the belltower (which tops the superb minaret of the former mosque) of the Cathedral of Sevilla. The La Giralda statue has a shield-like protusion at her side that catches the wind and causes the statue to turn, making it weathervane. There is even a bullfight pass called La Giraldilla that imitates the statue and involves the torero turning in imitation of La Giralda as the bull is passed with the muleta (the smaller red cloth). These writers go whichever way the wind blows or, pardon the pun, the bull goes. IMHO, many of these old school wines will continue to get attention, because they are so relatively rare in today's wine world. And because they are so damned good to drink with food. I also find it ironic that in an age when reviewers put an inordinately high value on new oak (I fervently wish that years ago Bob Parker had written "clean, re-conditioned, properly cared for oak," instead of "new oak"), that many American writers were damning traditional Riojas that were aged in neutral, tartaric crystal (in hard layers) coated barrels as "woody," when those wines were showing the mellow tones that come with several years of aging. These wines are also the antidote to the inky monster, new oak-lashed, high alcohol school of wine appreciation that so many consumers who just want a good glass of wine with a reasonable level of alcohol are fleeing. Gerry Dawes, Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel The Spanish Artisan Wine Group - Gerry Dawes Selections

There is no "we" and "they," but since you ask the "they" side of the ledger has had their day and real fine wine lovers in general have been moving away from the inky monster school of wine for years. And, lately, because of the generally outrageous cost and bad vibes for these types of wines--brought on by the high alcohol, low acid, grating new oak and those high prices--the general public is rebelling against this style. What didn't restaurateurs (and retailers and reviewers for that matter) understand about second glass and second bottle sales for these types of wine? Wines under 14% and especially those under 13% don't tire people out and lower alcohol wines get consumers to come back to the glass more often, so the wine disappears and they call for a refill. I mean, really, if you drink wine for the alcohol, it kind of misses the point. I have a dynamite margarita recipe if you want alcohol; it is quicker and cheaper. You know full well that I am no fan of the Parker approach to wine and I have been vociferous about it, but he has had plenty of copycat reviewers who bought the line. As I wrote in my reply (above) to Dave McIntyre: "To me, it is truly incredible that these top wine people were saying all this more than a decade and the wine industry still went headlong down this path, despite the warnings, and many who sought fool's gold by making what they thought was inky black gold are suffering the consequences of not listening to reasonable people with experience and taste. IMO, the "fruit bomb" and "brash new oak" (I should add high alcohol and low acid) approach to wine may well turn out in the long run to be as disastrous as phylloxera and TCA combined. In the short term, it made a lot of opportunists a lot of money, but now I am getting reports that many who were suckled on that tit are beginning to suffer from a profound lactose (read vinous) intolerance." I could be wrong, but in my opinion (and not just mine), Parker's influence has waned considerably and is headed south. In the opinion of many, including me, he has made some serious mistakes in judgement, one of the most serious being getting involved and letting his Spanish reviewer Jay Miller get involved up to his ears with the notorious Pancho Campo, who ended up resigning his Master of Wine status over the Pancho Campo-Jay Miller-Robert Parker affair which went on for three years. Ironically, like Napoleon, whose mistakes in invading Spain weakened his armies leading to his eventual defeat at Waterloo, there are parellells in the Campo affair. Point scores: I use point scores simply because I got used to using them over the years and it makes the most sense to me in being able to judge wines on a relative scale. Of course, the old Bob Finigan approach without scores was the best for hard core wine lovers, but it had no commercial appeal once Robert Parker started The Wine Advocate and began to use the 100-point scale, which was used in schools and which everyone could relate to. English writers always used a 20-point scale, which I found way too imprecise. Also, when I score wines I never taste them blind. As you know, I do not believe in blind tasting. Most have actually tasted at the wineries or in restaurants and private lunches or dinners. When I am doing reviews for articles, I usually open half a dozen wines at a time, usually in the evening, and I taste them just before dinner, then I keep tasting and making notes on the wines as I dine, pushing aside those that do not get better with food and continuing to make notes on those that do get better. I do not score x number of points for appearance, x points for nose, x points for palate. I judge the wine as a whole, taking all that I see smell and taste into consideration. Color usually has little to do with quality; appearance that clearly shows some kind of defect like oxidation, exceptional cloudiness or an excess of sediment does. I note nuances in the nose, but do not assign any score, though a wine will go down in rating if I detect more oak in the nose than vino. I just taste the wines and try to calculate where I think a wine falls on the 100-point scale based on everything I have ever tasted. When I taste a wine for a second time from another bottle, often months after I first tasted it, I never go back to my first note to check until after I have tasted the wine again. Generally, the point scores for both bottles will be within a point of one another. Why am I not more famous? Well, underground, among foodies, I am somewhat well known for my expertise on Spanish gastronomy, and I am known by real Spanish wine aficionados, but I have pissed off too many people over the years with my outspoken opinions--many of which have proved right because they were not opinions at all, they had their basis in reality-- and I have not published a book. Ironically, I am beginning to achieve more notice for my wine selections than for my expertise on Spain and my writing on Spanish wines, but we just hit a major distribution hitch with The Spanish Artisan Wine Group, which I think we will have sorted out by early 2013. (We have a business plan and are accumulating investors right now for what will be the very successful business of offering Spanish wines that are the antidote to what we have seen [and have complained about] for the past twenty years.) [begin shameless plug: Serious investors looking for a good return on their money and wanting to be part of a seriously good wine experience--drinking these wines goes with the package--should contact me at gerrydawes@aol.com; end shameless plug.] And, Don Rockwell, because of you and your followers on this website, I began digging into what I have written on Spanish wines and have almost completed putting the articles into a file for my A Traveller in Wines Book. So far, and I am not done, I have enough for a 400-page book. Now the editing and re-writing and organizing the whole book still needs to be done, but this weekend was a big start. Do I think I will be famous one day? How famous can one get being a Spanish wine expert? What could make me well-known is my Homage to Iberia book, for which James Michener, before he died, gave me the foreword and permission to call it the sequel to Iberia. That and Gula and The Garden of Earthly Delights, a novel set in New York with a food world backdrop, in Spain, in France and in California. Gula has a lot of behind-the-scenes encounters in the American gastronomic world and plenty of good travel-food-and-wine stuff from Spain, France, California and elsewhere. And the sex scenes, beginning with the one in Amboise that involves a Kir Royale made with Mountlouis sparkling wine and Chambord liqueur, make 50 Shades of Grey read like high school fare, but that is a story for another day. I hope I have answered your questions satisfactorily, Don. Gerry Dawes, Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel The Spanish Artisan Wine Group - Gerry Dawes Selections