May 19–25
JEREZ
We wanted
to come to Jerez de Frontera because it is the home to the actual Royal Spanish
Riding Academy,
the original school of the Vienna Lipizzans. It’s about a three hour bus ride
south from Seville,
into the heart of Andalucía.
We’ve
booked an apartment in a traditional Andalucían home, in a quiet neighborhood
close to the city center. The two-story, stucco home is a collection of
apartments where an extended family would typically live, around a pretty
interior courtyard. Instead of the relentless IKEA, we have a cozy décor with
Moroccan pillows, dark wood tables and heavy shutters. It looks very old world
and traditional. The listing notes “No practicing Flamenco in the apartment,”
which we thought was a joke, until we were walking through the streets and
actually heard someone practicing Flamenco in their apartment. Not something
you’d want to hear upstairs.
Our host,
Sebastian, grew up in Colorado and works
arranging vacations for a boutique travel agency, where his territory is Portugal, Spain
and Morocco.
It was fun to talk with him, and he had some wonderful suggestions for the best
experiences in Jerez.
His wife, Carmen, was shyer and quieter, while her Pomeranian, Poncho, was not.
As we
walked out through the city in the afternoon, we had our first real experience
of the dreaded Dead Zone. The city is vewy, vewy quiet. All the shops are shut
down and boarded up. Pretty much everything in the city closes down between 2pm
and 5pm, which, unfortunately, is prime time for us. We make our way around the
city, trying to get tickets for a horse show, a bodega tour, flamenco show, but
anything we try is closed. We’ll need to make some adjustments to accommodate
the local customs.
The city
is charming and attractive, full of parks and public squares and quiet
neighborhoods, with orange trees lining the streets. The orange trees tempt us
with heavy fruit hanging just out of reach. We spend a good twenty minutes
circling one tree, like feral animals on a stakeout, trying our reach on every
low branch, hopping up, shaking the limbs, poking with sticks, maddeningly
futile attempts to get ourselves an orange. We move on. They’re probably sour
anyways.
By the
second day, we’re in the groove and out early. Now the streets are humming with
life. The old Mercado is packed with shoppers, and surrounded by street-vendor
tents. All through the courtyard are tables set up to sell garlics and
caracoles, bags and bags of the little snails. Inside, the Mercado of Jerez is
famous for the fish market, and it is one of the best we’ve seen. We stand
mesmerized watching one merchant carve up huge fishes for the customers, while others
show off some flair as they fillet merluza, or hake, waving the knife with a
flourish. There are over thirty stands, selling every kind of fish and
shellfish from tiny baby eels to massive tunas.
We’re not
going to carry a bag of fish around all day, so we move on and head to the
equestrian center. When we arrive, tour buses are dropping off piles of
tourists for the noon performance. We’re planning on just getting tickets for a
training session, but as the show is about to begin, we decide to go along. We
are delighted to find that, despite the many groups attending, we have superb
seats at the center of the ring – the fifty yard line, as it were. The arena is
not as glamorous as Vienna
(what is?) but it’s a very attractive place, not too large, and all the seats
are close to the ring.
The
Andalucían horses are smaller and lighter boned than the Lipizzans, with their
Arabian heritage fully evident. The breed’s signature extravagant mane is
beautifully thick, long and wavy. Fun for the grooms, I think. The horses
execute dressage movements to music, making complicated team maneuvers. Next, a
performance of carriage teams, and finally some “airs above the ground,” always
a crowd-pleaser. The arena is located on parklike grounds, with a mansion and
small museum. There are several Przewalski's horses kept here also, a few of
the mere 1500 said to exist. They are beautiful! It’s very exciting to pet a
Przewalski’s snout.
As it
turns out, the Sandeman Sherry bodega is just next door, so after our horse
show, we take a tour. It’s terribly overpriced, we think, since most of it
consists of a mediocre video and some wall murals of peasants, vineyards and
barrels, but we enjoy seeing the rooms full of sherry barrels and learning
something about the production. We have a tasting, sharing our table with a
gruff Italian man on a business trip, and three American men on a road trip.
It’s fun to chat in English for a bit.
The city
is full of these sherry bodegas, as they are called, essentially blocks-long,
low warehouses full of barrels of aging sherry. They fill the air with a
fruity-oaky aroma. Some are only known in Spain,
others are major brands: Harvey’s
Bristol Cream, Sandeman, Tio Pepe. They don’t look like much from the street,
but once inside, there’s usually an elegant courtyard and garden.
Sebastian
has told us about a small bar that has Flamenco performances, so we hunt
through the streets to find it. When we do, it’s closed for the afternoon,
naturally. However, we hear music and singing down the alley. There’s a tiny
bar, a bodega selling sherry for a local producer, with a lively crew of
certified local barflies having a fine time. One woman calls us in,
enthusiastically giving up her barstool for me. We order the special, a half
bottle of sherry with four appetizers of Spanish prosciutto, for all of 3 Euros.
The singing and dancing erupts through the group, they all know the songs. As
we pour our glasses of sherry, a third glass slowly slides over to us, as our
neighbor begs a small taste for himself, which we happily share. We’re treated
to more impromptu performances of singing and dancing as a result. They’re all our
brothers now, chatting and laughing, not a dozen teeth among them all.
The next
day, Sebastian helps us out and makes an appointment for a tour at the Bodega
Tradicíon, a family-owned sherry company. The visit includes a bonus tour of
their private art collection, including Goya, El Greco and Picasso. We learn
more about the sherry-making process, which is essentially all about aging. The
bodegas rarely make their own wine, they purchase it from nearby wineries. It’s
blended with alcohol, brandy, and sugars, and sorted out by the sherry master
who decides which wines will become which type of sherry: fino, amontillado, cream
or Pedro Ximenes, a very sweet style sherry. The sherries are barreled for
several years. Every year, portions are drawn off the oldest barrels to bottle,
and replaced with portions from newer barrels, mixed to refill the older barrels
for a continuous blend of old and new, creating flavor consistency rather than
differences in vintage as is done with wines. At the end of our tour we enjoy a
tasting that includes some 50 year old sherry that sells for more than $300 a
bottle. We’ll not see the likes of this stuff any time soon.
Cádiz, “the
oldest continuously-inhabited city in Spain
and one of the oldest in southwestern Europe”
is a mere 40 minute train ride away, so it makes for a perfect day trip. The
city was founded by the Phoenicians, and pokes out from the Iberian Peninsula
into the Atlantic like a little thumb. The old
city itself, surprisingly, is isolated from the ocean by a great sea wall that
wraps around the city. We can walk along it, and look down over the high stone
wall to the water, but it’s impossible to get close to the water, except for at
the small public beach. We see lots of local guys fishing off the wall, using
big chucks of stale bread as bait. There are big fish in the water, although we
couldn’t tell if they were more like sea trout or like carp. Overall, though,
the city is interesting, historical and charming. There are color-coded paths
painted on the sidewalks, with informative brochures from the Tourist Office
to follow each path, green, purple,
orange or blue. A fun idea. We walk through the Medieval district, find a
pedestrian only street full of cafes, and enjoy a lunch of fresh grilled fish,
before hopping back on our train home.
The next
day, we need to have a Flamenco experience in this Flamenco Trail city. Sebastian
has recommended a small bar, El Pasaje, for an authentic, non-touristy show. We
find the place, and are just in time for the afternoon performance. It’s a very
small joint, a standing-only rough wooden bar, barrels of sherry filling the
wall behind it, and a room big enough for three or so barrels to stand against,
and maybe five small sturdy wooden tables before a little stage platform. We
grab a table right in front of the stage, for which we pay 20 Euros, including
sherries and tapas: fine Iberian ham and Spanish cheese. As the customers start
jostling in, the bartenders pour out sherry as fast as they can into small
non-stemmed glasses, filled to the brim. The performers are a short, robustly
stout, elegant woman and her guitarist accompanist, a sensitive, angular,
stringy man. As he waits to perform, he files his long fingernails, getting
them just right for the guitar. They begin, both sitting. She performs her
songs with a loud, fierce, rough passion, songs of lost love, pain and anguish.
She sits until the last song of her set when she explodes onto her feet
stamping and waving her arms, bringing the song to a grand crescendo finale.
It’s a great show.
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