Live life with fine Spanish wines

Last weekend we went to the Pyrenees and were unfortunate enough to get some poor weather. Friday was a scorching, hot day but the wind picked up in the evening and it rained hard overnight. The next morning it was overcast and pretty cool but at least it wasn’t raining. We went out at about 9:30 in the morning and came back to the house at about 11 o’clock.

It started raining again at lunchtime and we didn’t venture out again until it stopped at about 5 pm. As soon as we stepped out the door, we were hit by the cold air. The temperature had dropped dramatically over the previous hours and it was now positively COLD.

Then we noticed that one of the mountains that can be seen from our house, the Peña Collarada, had a dusting of snow at the peak! On the 12th of July!! This is sunny Spain – how can it snow in July? No doubt there have been other years when it has snowed in July and possibly even August but we couldn’t believe it. We had brought our swimming gear with us expecting to go to the pool and nobody had more than a light jacket.

Still, as we had a couple of Brits with us and we had planned for a barbecue, we went ahead and had an English Barbecue, i.e. we cooked under an umbrella. And very good it was too (eating indoors, of course, even the English aren’t that daft).

We started with some guacamole with excellent, fresh, Spanish bread washed down nicely with a bottle of Montenovo 2007. The guacamole was slightly hot and the tangy Godello from D.O. Valdeorras went surprisingly well with it. The rest of the carnivorous meal was helped along very nicely by some Condado de Haza 2005, a Ribera del Duero wine that never fails to please.

Next time, let’s hope we get some proper summer weather.

Ane Miren

Tags: Godello, Pyrenees, snow, Spain, wine

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am and is filed under About. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.