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Andalusia or Andalucía?

The autonomous region of Andalusia (Andalucía in Spanish) is in the southern part of Spain. It spans from Atlantic coast in the west to the sheltered coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the east and from Málaga's Costa del Sol to the borders of Castilla – La Mancha the famous flat lands and Don Quixote windmill country.  With an average of 300 plus days of sunshine a year the coastal area is an all year round destination. Not so in the inland provinces of Cordoba, Jaen and Sevilla which ha ve baking hot summers that can reach +40c and cold winters which can be 0c or less overnight. The Mezquita, Córdoba Andalusia is divided into eight provinces, each with a provincial city of the same name. Some of them are far more famous than others: Almería , Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Sevilla. The three land-locked provinces are Córdoba, Jaé n and Sevilla, the rest are coastal. Each province and city is full of culture, history, traditions, fabulous monuments and cre...
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Homemade and Organic Wine Time

Back in September I was coerced into doing something with my abundant grape crop by one of my rather large and scary Spanish neighbours. Then in February I dried orange peel because when making orange juice to try and get through the carrier bags full of home grown oranges we'd been given I couldn't bear to put all the peels in the bin (I don't put food in rubbish and they can't go in the worm compost bag).

I'd been feeling rather pleased with my domesticity (see post Becoming More Españolised - drying orange-peel domesticated) waste not want not, recycle everything and all that and I'd need the dried orange peel for this years batch of wine (or vinegar) and for firelighters, (although I can't for the life of me remember where I've stored the jars right now).


So from September I'd been having impatient glances at the demijohns and thought waiting for May was going to be unbearable. Well May came and went in a whirl of activity, so did June and just last night we finally got around to testing the big jar (the partial one was fantastic vinegar).

Carefully, as instructed, (non of that sterilizing everything, racking off, siphoning off stuff of my past experiences)just pouring it into bottles, then rather apprehensively we tasted the tiniest of sips (we knew what a slurp of vinegar was like) and looked at each other. Another taste and oh my, amazing. Wine. We'd made wine and not just any wine but a nice dry sherry-like wine. Ok it's a bit cloudy at the moment but it is niiiice.

First bottles getting a cork, rest in 5 litre containers

So we now have organic wine, vinegar and dried orange peel on the menu. There'll be no nagging this year, the grape crop will be eagerly awaited and soon harvested.

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