I may not be able to leave the house today owing to the home quarantine which is in force across all of Spain during the current coronavirus crisis, but at least in my wine cellar I can overcome boredom and travel to the extremes somewhat to find a vinicultural partner for my mediterranean-style lunch of […]
The grape harvest has begun in earnest in the Castilian terroir of La Ruta de Don Federico, a little earlier this year, with around 80 wineries of the Ribera del Duero having already picked some 3 million kilos of grapes across the appellation. For comparison, as of this date last year scarcely a single kilo […]
A week before the 2019 programme of La Ruta de Don Federico gets underway, I take a short ‘busman’s holiday’ downriver and over the nearby Portuguese border, where I find two bodegas of historical character and charm. Little more than an hour west of Salamanca, the River Duero, one of the the Iberian peninsula’s greatest […]
Although Castile and León is the heartland of our authentic wine tours, La Ruta de Don Federico occasionally ventures further afield – last year offering guests the opportunity to discover the windmill-dotted Don Quixote country of Castile La Mancha, the white-walled towns and sherry bodegas of Andalusia, and of course the best known wine region […]
An audience with a true pioneer of Spanish winemaking – Alejandro Fernandez, the ‘king of Tempranillo’ – at Dehesa La Granja in the Denominación de Origen of Vino de la Tierra de Castilla y León, one of the four bodegas of Grupo Pesquera. Full report to follow…