Notes from the North of Spain, Day One: Txiquiteo in San Sebastián
Monday, September 15th, 2008
THESE ARE NOT SHOTS: A scene from Bar Aralar Taberna in San Sebastián.
This week I will be posting daily reports from a trip I made to northern Spain last week with a group of sommeliers and journalists from the U.S. We spent most of our time, of course, paying visits to Rioja bodegas and vineyards, getting to know a bit more about the stories behind the bottles we tasted, but we began our journey in San Sebastián, where, in all of the great pintxos bars downtown you basically have five options by the glass: un cidra (cider), un txacolí (a spritzy, refreshing white wine made in nearby Guetaría with white and red grapes), una caña (a short glass of beer), un crianza (i.e., a Rioja crianza), or un reserva (i.e., Rioja reserva)*.
Monday, September 9, 2008
ARRIVAL
All members of our group accounted for at Bilbao airport. The ever-agreeable Kelly Bucher of the Vibrant Rioja team, a veteran of last year’s whirlwind sommelier/CIA production combo-platter trip that nearly did us in, is my co-host. Alfredo Ogueta, with whom I have traveled in Rioja now on four occasions, is our driver again for this trip, an enormous asset, given his driving skills, impeccable promptness, and his willingness to make phone calls to bodegas and Rioja’s Consejo Regulador, our hosts, on my behalf.
Lost luggage among one in our group sadly meant that our original plan to have lunch in the town of Guetaria at Elkano–a fish restaurant that Gerry Dawes once called “one of the finest in Spain, if not the world”–would not be possible. I had grappled with the wisdom of going straight to lunch from the airport but had concluded that most food and wine people would be willing to push through their jet lag to enjoy such high quality fish and one of Europe’s best wine lists, but my theory would not be tested today.
It was decided that we would go straight to our hotel in San Sebastián and enjoy pintxos later that evening in the city’s old quarter, or parte vieja.
Kelly and I step outside to go over the night’s plan and extract Euros from an ATM a block away. A woman in her early twenties in line behind us wears a t-shirt from CBGB, the infamous, now defunct punk club two blocks from my apartment. We step out onto the promenade overlooking the city’s famous Concha inlet and beach. The weather is perfect and, for a moment, I silently try to calculate a way to run upstairs, throw on a bathing suit, race into the water, come back, shower, and dress, all in time to meet everyone in the lobby in one hour. I abandon my dream.
OUTING
We’re a pretty big group, nine in all: Kelly, myself, plus five sommeliers from around the country and two journalists. They are:
Russel Corzine, Sommelier at Joe’s Prime Steak, Seafood, and Crab, Chicago, IL
Kelli Farwell, Wine Director for the Dressler Restaurant Group in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Rosie Gordon, Sommelier at Plumpjack Cafe, San FranciscoDavid Rosengarten, freelance journalist
David Rosengarten, freelance journalist
Tim Teichgraeber, freelance journalist
Gretchen Thomas, Beverage Director, Barcelona Restaurant Group, Connecticut
Barbara Werley MS, Beverage Director, Pappas Brothers Restaurant Group, Texas
Wild mushrooms, ham, and hake at Casa Tiburcio, San Sebastián
We make our way through the many pintxos (tapas) bars in the parte vieja, an activity the locals call txiquiteo [chee-khee-TAY-o] named after the squat little wine glasses the locals call txiquito (and Riojanos call chatos). Although it’s a Monday, with a couple of my favorites (Bar Borda-Berri, Goiz-Argi) closed for the evening, most bars remain open, including Bar Aralar Taberna, where slices of gamey jamon ibérico pair nicely with a Campillo 2007 Rioja Rosado as well as an uncharacteristically ripe 2001 Viña Alberdí Reserva from Bodegas La Rioja Alta); La Cepa, home to the best revuelto, or soft scramble, in the world, made with ultra fresh gambas and eggs no more than two days old; and Casa Tiburcio, whose wild mushroom dish (which includes the glorious perechico, a mushroom I have written about before) was lemony, earthy, and prodigiously habit-forming.
We finish our night at Bar Bergara across town, known for its creative pintxos. A canape topped with a mousseline of wild mushrooms, cream, and shrimp thrown under the salamander for a few seconds sounds simple enough, but, man alive, it put me under a little happy-trance, an experience punctuated by occasional snorts of Roda I 2004 Rioja.
By that point most of us are at the end of the line. I do wish we could stay here for another day or two. The beach is calling out to me. But we have a few big days ahead of us. It’s time to rest before heading over the mountain into San Sebastián’s chief supplier of red wine, Rioja.
TARANTINO TAPAS CRAWL: From left to right, Gretchen Thomas, David Rosengarten, Tim Teichgraeber, and Kelli Farwell in San Sebastián.
*The reason for the masculine article preceding a feminine noun (un crianza, un reserva) is the unsaid “vaso de,” or “glass of,” or “vino de,” or “wine with”
