News of NorthWestIberiaWineTours
If anybody is planning to visit Galicia in the coming months and wants to experience the age-old tradition of drinking red country wine from a white porcelain bowl (CUNCA), don’t forget to order a bottle of ‘TINTO BARRANTES’. The European Union, in its infinite wisdom, has banned the growing of the hybrid grape (HDP) used…
Only eight weeks to go to this year’s Festa do Tinto do Salnés in Barrantes, an exaltation of the famous Tinto do Salnés or Tinto de Barrantes. This exceedingly fruity wine is a deep violet tinged, blackcurrant red colour, and quite tart on the palate. Drunk from traditional white porcelain bowls or cuncas, its teeth,…
Pementos de Padrón, uns pican, outros non… This Galician refrain translates roughly as ‘Peppers from Padrón, some are hot, while others are not’, thus initiating the unwary diner in a time-honoured Galician food experience – a sort of hot pepper roulette. The farmers that grow them have yet to come up with a convincing theory…
Tarta de Santiago, Galicia’s most famed dessert, was not long ago declared, in gastronomic terms, a protected species. The designation itself, known as an IGP which stands for Indicativo Geográfico Protegido, is basically a tool which affords this most Compostelan of desserts a means of protecting its image and reputation in the modern world. The…
I read a very alarming statistic today. 60% of mussels prepared and canned in Galicia are imported from Chile. While I’ve nothing against Chile or the Chilean people, I have to say their mussels are crap compared to ‘Mytilus Galloprovincialis’, the Galician Mussel. Basically it’s ‘more economically viable’ to import Chilean product, add to that…