And so the post-Territorio Era-era begins and although the holidays may be over life must go on, which for this blogger includes finding a decent spot to refresh and replenish of a lunchtime. One that had been on my list for a while was Bache, and so I tooled along this week for what turned out to be a bit of an eye-opener.

You have to say that the list of sherries by the glass is absolutely magnificent. The highlight was a wine I am quite partial to which, unbelievably, was available by the glass (there is a clue in the picture), but I also counted 10 finos – from Jerez, El Puerto, and even Montilla Moriles – 6 manzanillas (including manzanillas finas, pasadas, and in between), 9 amontillados, 9 olorosos, 7 palo cortados, 2 creams, and 9 unfortified wines from the region. 52 wines in total, and a brilliant selection of 52 too: every style a sherry-lovers heart could desire, all top quality, and accompanied by some excellent little descriptions for the less experienced enthusiast. Absolutely outstanding. (The wine list had a load of other stuff from other regions and countries I think but to be honest I didn’t get past those first 20 pages.)

There is also good news for fans of the solid matter, in the form of a fun little menu fusing Andalucia and the far East. I was drawn to the ventresca of tuna like a moth to a flame, which was maybe pushing it in addition to the top class eggs with potatoes and camarones (and the little bao sandwiches, but who is counting). Fun stuff although to be honest the best of the three were the eggs, which arguably hadn’t been fused with anything (maybe after 15 years I am turning castizo).

A quality spot and an unpardonable omission from my list to date – well worth a visit and I will certainly be going back.

I enjoy blogging and I enjoy eating but as a “gastro” blogger I ought to be taken out to the shed and put out of my misery. Really, I am so shambolic at times it is almost artistic. Today I had an absolutely wonderful lunch in Alabaster, including a cabracho (red scorpionfish) that almost had me crying big salty tears all over the plate. But I utterly failed to take its picture until what could be termed as “too late”. You can see the photo above.

Luckily the heartbreak was assuaged by a jurel (horse mackerel) that was equally emotional, and if it hadn’t been for those two dishes I would be telling you all about the roasted leek with smoked eel. On a blog where superlatives abound today’s lunch was superlatively superlative, a succession of dishes each of which would have more than justified the trip.

And the wines were possibly even more superlative than that. I will have to come back to them in detail because, once again, Fran (who has form for this kind of thing) picked out some absolutely great pairings including one wine – a dorado from Rueda – that I had never tried but always wanted to, two very fine and very hard to get wines from el marco and a red that was just perfect with the mackerel.

You add to all of that the way these guys look after you it really makes for a special lunch – one of the very best I have had in a very long time (and I have had a few). Many congratulations to the chef for the outstanding, superlative superlative dishes, to Fran for some dazzling wines and pairings and to Oscar and Ricardo for the great care they took of me. I will be back to try and get a picture of a cabracho!

As many of you will know, the oasis of wine in Mercado Barceló that was Territorio Era is no more.

These last fifteen months Era has been my second home (or at least my second office). In part because the food was always fantastic – at first thanks to Diego, with his unique callos a la tailandesa and his quality show-cooking; and then to Liliana, who prepared the best salmonetes I have ever tasted bar none. But mainly I went for the wine. On that score, without Era, and specifically David Trillo, its sommelier and driving force, this blog – and the life of this blogger – would have been a much poorer, lesser thing.

I have lost count of the number of times I have called in for a quick glass of mood restoring balm (Era is referenced in 75 posts on this blog, and I am sure the real number of visits is higher) and he never let me down. An amazing variety – 100 something sherries by the glass at one point-, and a lot of absolutely outstanding wines. Among the wines from the sherry region off the top of my head the Fino, Oloroso and Raya from la Barajuela, the UBEs from Carrascal, Miraflores and Maina, Fino Capataz, Encrucijado, the legendary El Cid, Amontillado Gran Barquero, Las Viñas de Callejuela (2015 and 2014),  Precede, and some older wines (admittedly mostly brought to lunches) including a Panesa from 2010, a Manzanilla Sacristia AB from 2011, a quite magnificent Carta Blanca and a stately old Manzanilla la Pasada La Guita, to name just a few. But on top of those there were some fantastic champagnes and hard to get wines from Jura, the Loire, the Canary Islands and other far flung spots – and with a generous BYO policy (no fee) the possibilities of a given dinnertime were literally endless.

I met a lot of characters and made a lot of friends at that bar – I was there so often it was a pretty good place to find me of a lunchtime-, and there were also some really memorable occasions. Of the ones that made it onto the blog the Night of the Pitijopos (Volume II) back in January and Florpower Friday stand out, but there was also a fantastic dinner on a Sunday night (with the whole market closed around us), the start of a big night out with Erik and Laura of montillamorilesuk.com back in March, wine tastings with friends and colleagues and a large number of lunches that could best be described as “riotous”. Neither will I ever forget rocking up there one Saturday afternoon for a quick glass of wine only to find the place full of wine lovers in an advanced stage of “merriment”: the sensation of being the most sober person present was both unusual and unnerving.

But now David is moving on in order to find a better location (and the current plan is a place that, thankfully, is not so far from my real office). Wherever it is, however, I will be there, and you, dear reader, should be there too. Because if you really love wine it is your duty to get out and drink them, and in particular support guys like David, who go to enormous lengths to offer such a variety of high quality liquids. The world is a better place for establishments like his, it was a blessing to have Territorio Era so near over the last year and this blogger and many others are going to miss them greatly for the next few months.

Looking back at what was a pretty fun 2017 as a blogger it dawned on me that I had never properly written up what was probably the best night of the year, an absolutely unforgettable evening in Corral de la Morería.

The Corral de la Morería is Madrid’s and the world’s most famous, and probably best, venue for flamenco and a place of pilgrimage for many. It was opened in 1956, making it the oldest known tablao of its type, has been the scene of some historic moments and performances by the very best artists (just check out the list on the website) and has been frequented down the years by the likes of Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan, Kiss, John Lennon and others of their ilk. Founded by Manuel del Rey, the business was taken over on his death by his wife, Blanca del Rey, herself a world class cantaora, and is now run by their sons, José Manuel and Armando. I am told that the tablao is so famous it can book artists that other places cannot, and although I am almost completely illiterate in flamenco terms I can tell you from personal experience that the artists I saw there – including a fellow called Jesus Carmona – were absolutely superb.

In addition the dinner you can tuck into while watching the artists is also from the very top drawer. It has a top class, Michelin starred chef – David Garcia, who won his Star in Álbora – and the pairing menu we had was as good as anything you can get in Madrid (I can still remember the pichon a good five months later). The only problem, as I said in my post at the time, was that with the spectacular show taking place a few metres away it really was impossible to pay the food the attention it deserved, but I am told that since then this problem has also been resolved: they now have a separate “Restaurante Corral de la Morería” reserved for dining in peace before the show starts.

But anyway, this blog is not about dance or about food, and the real reason I felt I had to come back and write something was the phenomenal line-up of wines we were given with the pairing menu (not that I made any note whatsoever of the dishes they accompanied – apologies for that). They are said to have the largest collection of sherries in Madrid and, frankly, I believe it, but more importantly they gave me the right ones.

• Socaire 2014 – a fantastic way to start, with what I have no doubt is the Grand Cru de Chiclana de la Frontera, a 100% palomino from a terrific little vineyard called Finca Matalian, at the Southernmost point of the region but soils that are high in calcium, 100m high and only eight kilometers from the sea. It was a terrific wine – and the current vintage, the 2015, is just as good – I refer you to my earlier posts for full details.
• Encrucijado 2014 – that was followed up by another terrific wine and one of the new stars of the region. The Encrucijado is almost unique in that it is plurivarietal, and has a wiry structure and butterscotch flavours that just seem to get better with the time in the bottle. Again, I refer you to earlier posts for full details.
• Fino de Añada 2009 (March 2017) – the first really biological wine on the night was this little gem from Williams & Humbert. Really superb progression of wines, this following the Encrucijado’s butterscotch with sweet hazelnut and salty potency but with a fine, sharp, fresh elegance. Once again, if you would like more details check out these posts.
• Fino Especial La Panesa – very occasionally there comes a time when you think the sommelier is reading your mind and this was one of them. I was just thinking how much I would like to compare the hazelnuts of the Williams with the roasted almonds of this, the king of solera finos, and hey presto it appeared. (What made it more fun was that the wines were being served blind, and I laughed when I scented this one.) An absolutely regal fino which I have written about from time to time in the past.
• Amontillado 7/7 de la Callejuela – now this, on the other hand, I had never tried and would never have identified for anyone’s money (I might have been able to tell you that it was an amontillado). It is a wine that was bottled specifically for the guys at Corral de la Moreria by those great lads at Callejuela – and a very nice, balanced amontillado too, with a nice sharp biological, Sanlúcar character but plenty of body and juice and nice honey-like notes. A really superb wine and, again, perfect after the Panesa.
• Palo Cortado Privilegio 1860 – As I mentioned before, these wines were arriving blind but I have to say the sommelier gave himself away a bit because he was unable to hide his excitement when this was served. It is, simply put, one of the very best wines I have ever had from any region. A sweet spicey nose, perfect profile of smooth acid, full body and long finish, silk on the palate and an unbelievable array of flavours from nuts to ginger, chocolate and spices that seem to last forever. Looking back I now see that I have had this on no less than four occasions – if you ever hear me complaining just remind me of that fact.
• Don PX Convento 1946 – if my good friend the sommelier was excited about the Privilegio he was gleeful about this one. The first and only wine from outside the Sherry region, this is, you guessed it, a pedro ximenez from Montilla Moriles, and a legendary one too. These really old pedro ximenez are fascinatingly dark, and this one was like a peppery dark chocolate in character, but for once the progression didn’t do the wine any favours – maybe it was the comparison with the Palo Cortado (or maybe purely because it is so concentrated to start with) but this one, complex as it was, didn’t come across as quite as expressive.
• Toneles – and we finished by returning to the sherry region and another absolutely legendary wine, Valdespino’s exceptional old moscatel. Superb aromas of brandy, raisins, sweet spices, chocolate, cedar and tobacco, then a lovely buttery mouthful of intense flavour and immense length – with sweet raisin and chocolate with figgy spices. An absolutely exceptional finish to a quite stunning line up of wines.

Really brilliant wines individually but also a beautifully judged progression from light to shade, up through the ages and styles. Awesome stuff. And while I only had a glance at the first few pages of the monumental winelist I saw enough to be able to tell you there are plenty more where these came from.

When you are blogging it is easy to get over-excited with the hyperbole and declare everything fantastic, awesome and unforgettable but when it comes to that night at el Corral all of the superlatives apply. I really won’t forget it in a long, long time.

I haven’t been in far too long – probably years – but as is so often the case I can’t tell you why. Viavélez is a brilliant little taberna/restaurant/bistro specializing in the food of Asturias – the beloved country that is near to my heart – and famous in particular for its croquettes. And based on this photo – kindly sent to me by @Amandosfalcon – it also deserves to be famous as a sherry temple. Magnificent stuff – every base covered. Will not be long before I go back!

I haven’t been to Wilda yet, but all the cool kids are going so I couldn’t resist lifting a few pictures off twitter and sharing (let’s be honest if I took my own they would be rubbish).

Here is what I know: it looks cool; the people behind it are top quality; Calle del Leon 9 is in Huertas, strategically located halfway between Angelita and La Fisna; they have a cracking list of wines by the glass (including 14 wines you will find on the pages of this blog, and a couple of little beauties too); and they are not open on Mondays or Tuesdays. (I am really hoping they are open on Friday at lunchtime – we shall just have to see.)

That is all I can tell you for the moment: for more information I strongly recommend following their adventures on twitter at @vinosfelinos. Or even better, get down to Calle del Leon and get in there.

All too brief dropin at Surtopia – newly crowned Tapas champions – this morning. Always a fantastic spot, the food here just gets better and better, and the decor has been upgraded even further in the summer. 

But the neatest upgrade is to the winelist: in addition to the outstanding selection of manzanillas, finos, amontillados, palo cortados, olorosos, and red, white and pink wines from el Marco (no fewer than 21 table wines from the Cadiz region), they now have a super list of 22 grower- producer champagnes, at absolutely fantastic prices.

Of course I stuck to the old favourites – the house wine, which in this case is of course a special bottling of Sanchez Ayala’s famous Gabriella Oro.