Well, we didn’t win the lottery but we did get taken to a cider-house. Bautista the Bodger and Smelly Miguel (he’s not really smelly, he just wears too much aftershave) decided they wanted to eat at Olaziola in Hernani. The brothers Olaziola are pelotaris, Basque handball players, who will probably meet each other in the semi-finals of the World Championship next month. Just as the World Series involves only US baseball players so the World Pelota Championship involves only Basques. Anyhow, the sport being awash with gambling money, the Olaziola brothers invested their winnings in an old farmhouse and turned it into a cider-house.

Whilst cider has been made around here for centuries, cider-houses are a relatively new venture. Traditionally, farmers would harvest their apples in October, ferment the juice in huge wooden casks and bottle it in April. In January they would invite their neighbours to sample the new cider straight from the barrel. Standing around a table in the cold cellar, they would drink the flat, dry cider and eat bacalao (salt-cod), steak, cheese and walnuts, helping themselves from a single plate in the middle of the table. After coffee and brandy or pacharán, (an anise-based liqueur, flavoured with sloes, tasting of cough medicine) the neighbours would toddle off across the hills back to their own farm.

About 25 years ago some of the more astute cider-makers decided to commercialise this tradition. There are now some 60 or 70 cider-houses dotted around the hills of Hernani and Astigarraga serving draught cider and simple food in a rustic setting all year round.

Smelly Miguel is an avid pelota gambler but that wasn’t the reason he wanted to eat at Olaziola. It was the bacalao, prepared in a thick, green, olive oil and parsley sauce and served in an earthenware dish that he was after. The dish is gently shaken on the hob for about 20 minutes until the gelatine from the fish thickens the sauce turning it unctuous and sticky. The steak that followed was several centimetres thick, weighed about a kilo and was barely cooked, just charred on the outside and sprinkled with salt. With the cry, “Txotx” the cellarman opened the spigot in one of the huge vats and a jet of cider crashed to the concrete floor. Or at least it would have done had I not shoved my tumbler into the flow and caught a decent mouthful. Filling the glass is considered extremely bad manners. This means queuing up and catching another splash whenever you want a drink. There were 11 vats of cider, each named after a neighbouring parish. We tried them all but thought the vat named Ezkurra was not as good as Leitza and that Berastegi was the best.

Our toddle home meant Miguel driving us along the narrow road that follows the Urumea River up to its source, high in the mountains above San Sebastian. Naturally, we stopped for a drink in Goizueta. Miguel barely noticed the wild boar that darted across the road right under our noses. He simply flicked his toothpick to the other side of his mouth and drove on. Miguel never drives fast.

Some days are better than others. DouDou knows it is going to be a good day if she sees the enormous statue of Jesus Christ on Monte Urgull overlooking the bay of San Sebastian as we emerge, blinking at the sunlight, from the mile-long Belabieta tunnel. The statue was built by Franco but it’s not nearly as impressive as Christ the Redeemer on Rio’s Corcovado which it’s supposed to emulate.

I know it’s going to be a good day if I see the family of wild boar in their pen on the side of the hill on the way down into Leitza. The boar is huge with a big bog-brush ridge of bristles down his back. The sow and her young are harder to spot.  If you’ve read Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time then you’ll recognise the symptoms. Hearts are lifted and lottery tickets bought.

For some time we have not seen any sign of life in the pig-pen. Nor have we won the lottery. Last night, our landlord, Bautista the Bodger, revealed why. The boar family belongs to a farmer, leader of a local hunting clan. One night, a gang broke into the pen by cutting through the huge padlock on the gate. They enticed the parents out of their sty with maize, shot them both with silenced rifles and stole the six little piglets. One youngster escaped and was being bottle-fed by the farmer’s wife. The rest have disappeared. Chief suspect is the town blacksmith because he owns bolt-cutters powerful enough to cut the padlock and belongs to a rival hunting clan.

Yesterday, a small wild boar piglet was spotted rooting around in the muddy pig-pen. A lottery ticket was bought from Miguel.

It’s going to be a good day.

Wednesday, 23 April, St George’s Day, is considered the birthday of William Shakespeare and it is also the anniversary of his death in 1616. Coincidently, Miguel Cervantes died on the same date. The Bard of Avon and el Principe de los Ingenios, the two most important influences on Western literature having departed, it is up to me and my blog to fill the gap.

The feedback I have received so far suggests shorter, sharper posts with more humour and less detail. Except from Simon who said it was too brief but that was because he hadn’t read it.

So, that’s your lot for today. I’m off to Pamplona tomorrow for a wine tasting.

Toodle Pip!

As I wandered around the tasting last week, I overheard an interesting snippet of conversation regarding Familia Belasco’s recent purchase of vineyards in Mendoza, Argentina. The Argentine vendors thought they had pulled a fast one on the ‘Gallegos’ who had bought the 70 hectare vineyard. (As the English have Irish jokes and the Irish have Kerryman jokes so Argentines refer to Spaniards as ‘Gallegos’, simple fishermen from Galicia.) The old Malbec vines, densely planted in 1919,  are very low yielding so, little appreciating that quality outsells quantity every time, the Argentines thought they had duped the purchasers into buying a useless plot of land. The magnificent, rich, powerful Arguentota Malbec 2004 and the huge, purple, chocolaty Swinto Malbec 2005 were testament to the wisdom of the Familia Belasco.

There’s a little wooden sign hanging in my cellar that reads, “Life’s too short to drink cheap wine.” But when is a wine cheap? Last week, José Antonio Cruz invited me to the launch party at the Vinoteca in Pamplona to celebrate Bodegas Familia Belasco winning the 2008 Grand Golden Bacchus award for their Marco Real Reserva de Familia 2004.  What a magnificent wine! A bright cherry red, complex fruits and vanilla spices on the nose with sweet, ripe fruits balanced by firm tannins, long and full in the mouth.

Roser Girbau, the oenologist, talked of her efforts, the labour and expense involved in its creation; hand-picked grapes from their own vineyards, manually selected, fermented in state-of-the-art, temperature controlled stainless steel tanks then aged in new French oak. It is easy to understand how a wine with this massive investment behind it can beat off competition from 1683 other wines in a blind tasting to win Spain’s top prize. I’m pretty sure anyone with enough money can craft a wine to win competitions but how much would it sell for? I was astonished to hear the venerable and proud Don Juan Ignacio Belasco reveal that the Marco Real Reserva 2004 will hit the shelves next month at around €10 a bottle. This is a wine created for consumption not competition. What a bargain!

Juan Ignacio went on to say that there were wines costing over €200 a bottle entered for the Grand Bacchus competition.   My wine tutor, the much revered Arthur Bone used to say, “Ask yourself two questions when tasting a wine. Do I like it? Can I afford it?” Well, I, for one, cannot afford €200 for a bottle of wine no matter how much I may like it. “But is that expensive?” asked Juan Ignacio. He went on to say that in his opinion, a wine is only expensive if it fails to meet his expectations; a €10 wine can disappoint and thus be a waste of money whilst a €100 bottle could astonish and turn out to be a bargain.

I was astonished by the Marco Real.

Toodle Pip!