Spain's best kept secret - revealed


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Oceans and Seas
October 1st 2011
Published: October 1st 2011
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Spain's best kept secret is now revealed!

Whoever could have known that a day that started so normally - you know, smoked salmon and cream cheese followed by the contents of a salad bowel all freshly prepared and then eggs, bacon, mushrooms, black pudding, sausage, tomato, hash browns, toast and even ice cream if you'd wanted it! - could end with the revelation of an amazing secret.  We hit land this morning - not dramatically thank goodness; just by gliding into the dockside in Cadiz.  This is a beautiful Spanish city with miles and miles of perfect sandy beaches.  We'd booked ourselves on a trip to nearby Jerez de la Frontera to visit a sherry cellar - which was a slightly strange choice for a virtual tee totaller.  The smell as we entered the bodega was amazing - thousands upon thousands of gallons of sherry and brandy slowing maturing in their oak casks.  Kept at a constant 18 degrees,  the high wooden ceilings are only ever one spore away from a mouldy mess but the alchemy of what goes on under those lofty roofs is a mixture of science and magic.  Neither of us actually likes sherry so we expected to be more impressed by the tapas but boy were we wrong!  We began with an Amontillado which was honey coloured and lighter tasting than we expected.  Yum yum - this is going better than we predicted.  Then we moved on to an Oloroso.  This was darker coloured and its warm tones danced beautifully on our taste buds.  But they were poor cousins compared with what was to come.  You know the drink most of us turn down at the end of a fancy dinner - a dessert sherry.  Thick, dark and gloopy in appearance I got within a gnats of turning it down.  OMG - what a bad gnats that would have been1  They dry the grapes in the sun for 2 weeks until they turn into golden raisins.  And then brew the most divine, spectacular, heavenly sherry in the world.  The addition of caramelized sugar turns this into what tastes like treacle, caramel and raisins all mixed together.  Greedily we both gratefully accepted seconds.  And moving on to taste two excellent brandies did not deaden the flavour of that amazing Muy Viejo.  Our guide even recommended that the best way to drink it is poured over a big blob of vanilla ice cream.  What a great idea!

The afternoon was spent back on board sunbathing, swimming and dreaming of taking the top of our very own bottle of liquid heaven1

I know today's update is just devoted to a single topic.  But when you discover something so special, it's hard not to become a blogging bore on the subject.  Sorry!

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