Jerez - Our first ever wine tasting experience

After the hecticness of Sevilla, Jerez was a lovely place to escape the crowds and noise. Located about 90km south of Sevilla, Jerez is known worldwide for its production of Sherry, flamenco shows and world class horsemanship schools. Having had a taste of flamenco already in Granada and Sevilla, we decided to instead focus on the Sherry!

The best way to find out and experience this was to go on a wine tasting tour of one of the many bodegas within Jerez. We looked through several and carefully chose one; Bodega Fundador Pedro Domecq. The reason we chose this one is that it offered the best value for money, being a longer tour than 90% of the others and allowed you to try a wider selection of drinks as well, also offering the opportunity of not only tasting Sherry wine but also brandy.

The nice grounds of Pedro Domecq Bodega

The tour lasted about 90 minutes, and we were joined by two other people; a father and son from Exeter in England! The good thing about having a small group was that it allowed us to ask more questions and take more pictures.

To start the tour we watched a 15 minute video about the history of the bodegas and about the region of Jerez in general, learning some very interesting facts. This bodega specialised in Fundador Brandy, Harvey's Bristol Cream and Terry Sherry wine, which comes in different types. The most famous ones are: Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso and Pedro Ximnez. The type of grapes used to produce these Sherry wines are the Palomino grape and the Pedro Ximnez grape in different concentrations.

The four most famous types of Sherry in Jerez

All the grapes used for these Sherry's are grown within the triangular area of the province of Cadiz between Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and Puerto de Santa María. Once they are picked and pressed the juices (must) are allowed to ferment for a few months. After those few months the wine is tasted and then depending on how it tastes determines how they will fortify it to make the different types of sherry wine.

This is where the tour guide took over. She first of all took us on a little tour of the facilities before then moving on to show us into a huge room full of casks of Sherry wine. She explained how after they have been fortified they are put into 500 litre casks made of North American Oak, some of the casks are over a hundred years old.

This cask was over a hundred years old

The sherry is then left to age for a minimum of 3 years using the solera system. This is where there is a stack of 3 rows of casks on top of each other and as the wine ages a third of the wine from the top cask is removed and put in the cask below it and left for another year to age, and so on till the bottom cask where a third of the wine is taken out, (which would be after 3 years) it is then put into bottles and is ready to drink!

The solera system with the oldest wine at the bottom and the newest at the top

We were then taken around some casks that were signed by famous people that had visited the bodega in the past, there were some very well known names like Charlton Heston, Bo Derek, a past King of Italy and Pablo Picasso's daughter.

Barrels signed by famous people, you can see Picasso's daughter and Charlton Heston here.

The last part of the tour was what most people would consider the highlight; the tasting. For us this was an experience in itself as neither of us had had sherry wine or brandy before. We were given two of each types of drink to sample. First of all were the Sherry's, the first sherry neither of us were particularly keen on, but we both quite liked Harvey's Bristol cream, which was a blend of sherry and brandy. We then tasted the brandy's, (the highlight for our tour companions) the first one was a normal brandy, which again neither of us was very keen on, but the second, the Fundador brandy that our tour companions had raved about so much was really smooth and was surprisingly good for a brandy!

To finish off we were shown to the Bodega's shop where our tour companions from Exeter were kind enough to buy us a magnet as a souvenir.

The magnet we were given as a souvenir

So if you are in Jerez in the future and are thinking about having a tour of a bodega, we would highly recommend it.

Sevilla and its world famous Semana Santa Celebrations

On arriving in Sevilla and stepping out of the car, we were hit by just how hot it was. The temperature was 37°C and was quite a contrast from where we had just come from. Fortunately for us, this was the hottest day during our stay in Sevilla so it didn't cause us too many problems, although it was a sign of things to come in Spain as summer starts to get closer and closer! Sevilla along with Cordoba are Spains two hottest cities, where temperatures in the height of summer can climb to 45-50°C. Something to look forward to!

The main highlight for us staying in Sevilla was of course the Semana Santa celebrations, arguably the best and biggest in the whole of Spain. Semana Santa, also known as Holy week is celebrated during the week leading up to Easter day. It is celebrated not only in Spain but also in Latin America. The festivities in Spain begin on Palm Sunday (Sunday before Easter) and continue throughout the week until Easter morning. Major towns and cities will have processions every night of the week, whilst smaller towns and villages will only have processions from Maundy Thursday till Easter morning. Antonio Banderas even returns to his home city of Malaga to celebrate it every year.

Float with the weeping Virgin Mary

The processions involve the brotherhoods from the churches wearing robes and hats very similar to ones that were worn by the infamous Klu Klux Klan. However there is no association whatsoever with this. The members of the brotherhoods carry various different things including, crosses, candles, incense, and most importantly the huge floats that depict scenes from the week leading up to Jesus' death and then resurrection, as well as a the Virgin Mary weeping for her son. This is accompanied most of the time by a band playing solemn music (at least in Sevilla).

As we arrived in Sevilla on Thursday we were just in time to witness the biggest processions of the week; El Silencio, Jesús del Gran Poder, La Macarena, La Esperanza de Triana and Los Gitanos. These processions begin very late in the evening and go on until the morning of the next day, the longest lasting 14 hours (we did not stay to watch it all). These processions were amazing to see and what was even more astounding was the amount of people from all over the world that turn out to watch them. The streets are packed with people, leaving hardly any room to move at all. Pushing your way through the crowds is a fight in itself. But getting a good view is well worth it.

Processing through the streets of Sevilla

Each procession has similarities to another, but has its own individuality as well. Some of the most notable ones include El Silencio, which is done in total silence, and when the procession approaches everyone around starts telling people to shhhh and be quiet. The other, which was probably our favourite was La Macarena, which sounded really grand and was colourful and filled you with a sense of sorrow and loss hearing the music. We also witnessed the largest brotherhood in Sevilla with over 2000 members process past us, this took about 2 hours just for them all to pass us! We eventually left the crowds at 5am in the morning to get some sleep.

We ourselves got into the Easter spirit a bit as well, trying various traditional Easter foods like pestiños (pastries with sesame and honey), rosquillas (Easter doughnuts), and torrijas (slices of bread soaked in milk, sugar and egg, fried in olive oil then dipped in honey or syrup), all of which were very nice. We even made our own Mona de Pascua (Easter Cake).

The traditional torrijas enjoyed at Easter time

Apart from the Easter celebrations we were also able to visit many different places in Sevilla. The Cathedral in Sevilla was a particular highlight being the largest cathedral in the world and the third largest church after St Peters Basilica in Vatican City and Our Lady of Aparecida Basilica in Brazil. Having seen some pretty big churches ourselves (St Pauls Cathedral in London and Haghia Sophia in Istanbul) we had high standards, but we were still surprised at the size of the building from the inside. It has 15 doors on the outside and 80 chapels inside, where apparently they had up to 500 services a day! Also located inside the cathedral is the tomb of the famous explorer who discovered America Cristóbal Colón better known as Christopher Columbus.

Sevilla Cathedral - The worlds third largest church

The other main highlight for us in Sevilla was the Plaza de Espana; a huge semi-circular complex that surrounds a fountain with water running around the inside of it. Within this huge complex there are different sections along the walls that show a map of each different province within Spain. A further highlight was the fact that the Plaza was used in the filming of two Star Wars films (Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones). It made a stunning location for pictures!

The beautiful Plaza de Espana

See what we did after Easter in our next post where we see the world famous city of Sherry and one of the oldest cities in Europe!

Easter begins in Granada

Arriving back in Granada again after 4 weeks in the Alpujarras was like returning home for us. It was a place we had fallen in love with in just two short days previously. On returning our love for the city just continued to grow.

Wandering back through the streets of Granada was great, we walked some of the same streets again, but also discovered new ones we hadn't seen before. The different areas within Granada offer such different things for visitors to the city. The real beauty, for us of Granada is the atmosphere of the whole city; it's so relaxed and chilled, but has a feeling underneath it of being alive as well. With a very large student population it also gives it a youthful feel.

The highlight of our first few days in Granada was probably the free guided tour of the cave houses in the Sacromonte district. The guy running the tour was in fact previously from Richmond, London, so was quite a funny coincidence. The fact that he was British however did not affect his knowledge of the city though, (probably helped he had been living there for 5 years). We were shown first around the rich part of the Albayzin area, with him pointing out the old Arab baths and the best places to go and watch Flamenco dancing. We then made our way out of the Albayzin district and up into the Sacromonte district seeing the houses built into the side of the mountain was our first glimpse of the famous cave houses here.

Lovely view over the city and caves

Apparently the houses we could see were not actually owned, but lots of people just set up a home there, some with solar power and other amenities, others very basic. But what they all had in common was a real sense of community and working together. Our guide explained that the authorities each year evicted the people from the caves and sometimes collapsed the caves and filled them in to prevent them being inhabited again. Instead of this putting people off though, it seems to have had the opposite effect. Everyone is working together to unearth the caves that the authorities collapsed and they all grow food together, it's amazing.

One of the caves the authorities collapsed after being unburied by the locals

As we went further on the tour we got to the top of the mountain and enjoyed some beautiful views of the whole city and of the Alhambra, it was beautiful. On making it to the other side of the hill it's surprising to see how abruptly the city stops, it's like a clear line between the two where the old city wall is. On the other side though we also came across some other cave homes. The difference between these ones and the ones we saw previously was that these were actually owned by people and were built like proper homes as people lived there full time without the threat of being evicted. In fact you could buy your own cave for about 10,000 Euros!

Buy one of these caves for 10,000 Euros?

After the tour we went back to Plaza Nueva, which is a popular area for locals to go out and have drinks and tapas at the local bars, we thought we would do the same. We looked around a bit before ending up having a nice beer and tapas at a bar called La Antigualla where we got two small burgers with chips to share with our drinks (you have got to love Spain)! Afterwards we went to another bar and instead of getting a drink and tapas decided to get a bocadillo to share, whilst we watched Granada beat Barcelona 1-0 on the big screen TV, much to the delight of the rest of the bar! This rounded up a great day.

The following day we were in for a real surprise though. It started out really nice with a trip to look more thoroughly through the Albayzin district, which is in fact a UNESCO world heritage site. It has a lot of narrow winding roads, very similar to the ones we had encountered in the medinas in Morocco. There were also some lovely viewpoints of the city and the Alhambra from this area as well, although a lot of them were very busy, filled with tourists. In the same area we came across a convent where nuns are still secluded from the outside world. They have next to no contact with anyone, the only contact we saw was where some locals came into the convent to buy some traditional easter sweets from the nuns (Roscos fritos - small doughnuts with sugar and syrup on, traditional at Easter). However they only sold them these sweets through a small window to minimize contact.

In the late afternoon though was when we had a nice surprise. Whilst walking along we heard a band playing in the distance. Heading towards the sound we came across a big crowd of people outside of Ave Maria Church. We had stumbled across the opening ceremony of Semana Santa in Granada! It was really special to watch, like nothing either of us had seen before. There must have been several hundred people taking part in this one procession from this single church. They had three bands, lots of people in traditional dress, women in black, children handing out pictures of Jesus, candles and palms held, as well as crosses and other symbols of that specific church. But the main attraction was two huge floats, one depicting the Virgin Mary mourning the death of Jesus and the other a scene from before Jesus was crucified. We learned that the people that held up these floats train for months to do this. We could see why, as these floats must have weighed a tonne! There was so many people and so much going on that it took them an hour just to get out of the church. This was our first taste of the Semana Santa celebrations, which were to only get better the further into Easter week we went!

Float of Jesus riding his donkey

On our 5th day in Granada we decided to do a day trip to a village 30mins away by bus, in the foothills of the northern part of the Sierra Nevada mountains, the village was called Monachil. Our reason for going there was to do a trail through the mountains, which was supposed to be very beautiful; Los Cahoros. The difference between this trail and the ones we had done in the Alpujarras was that this involved walking over hanging rope bridges, crawling under cliff faces and navigating along a gorge, with a river flowing between it. This was really really good fun as well as offering some beautiful scenery.

Hanging out over the edge of the gorge

Walking on the hanging bridges

Once back in Granada, in the evening we went out with Carmen's friend Jess, (who was visiting Granada as well) and 3 other girls she knew for the evening at a bar for some drinks and tapas. It was nice to meet up with them and learn a bit about our upcoming trip to Sevilla (Jess's friends live and work there).

The following day saw me getting up at the unholy hour of 5:30am to go across the road and queue up for tickets to see the Alhambra. Even arriving in line at 5:45am I was not the first, I was in fact about 40th in line! I then had to wait just over two hours for the ticket office to open. Carmen joined me at about 6:30am to keep me company. Once securing tickets we went inside. Was getting up early to wait inline worth it I hear you ask? I have very mixed feelings on this. The fact of the matter is that the Alhambra is very very beautiful and if you have never been to Morocco before I would say it is definitely worth the visit. The problem for us is that we had been to Morocco and there are a lot of similarities between the architecture of Moroccan buildings and the Alhambra. Having said this we still really enjoyed looking around it and the gardens were very beautiful, more so than ones in Morocco. The history of the place is very interesting as well. But overall it wasn't worth the admission price we paid having already seen similar places in Morocco.

The classic photo of the Alhambra

Picture of the gardens in the Alhambra

Our last day in Granada involved visiting things we had missed so far, the Coral del Carbon, Campo del principe, and having some churros with chocolate, (a bit greasy and not quite what we were expecting). Also in the evening we went to a bar we had been to on a previous night and enjoyed a nice tapas whilst watching Real Madrid win the Copa del Rey Final against Barcelona.

This rounded off a lovely week in Granada, but we will greatly miss it, as so far this has been our favourite city. In our next blog post we shall continue the Easter week celebrations in Sevilla!