Murcia Monastrell Magic

07-Jun-10 - I went to Murcia during May for research for a series of tastings of 'The Real Monastrell from the Region of Murcia' in Edinburgh and Manchester. Or rather off to Alicante as the flights are more convenient, and my hosts, the Regional Government, had put me up in the beautiful Hotel Rural Umbría del Factor, on the outskirts of Yecla, about 100 km from the airport. This is one of those 'in the middle of nowhere' places but, unlike a few I've stayed at recently, has an excellent (and good value) bar/cafeteria and restaurant. It was converted from an old manor house, and the rooms are large, comfortable and well-appointed. The hosts were paying, of course, but I checked on the web and a double room with single occupancy starts from €58, which is a bargain, especially as it includes free Wifi. An excellent place, indeed.

The Hotel Umbría del Factor 'rest, relax, make yourself comfortable'. Pic.: Hotel website

The Murcia Monastrell Roadshow got underway a month later: I took the train to Edinburgh on the Monday - not a bad journey as I managed to get a knock-down first-class ticket from King's Cross to Edinburgh. This used to include a lunch but, alas, no more, although the menu was halfway decent and not expensive to buy on board. It was fortunate, however, as there were repeated announcements before the train departed saying that there were no unreserved seats in second class, and passengers without a seat reservation would probably have to stand all the way (a single ticket is about £100). In the good old days, of course, they'd simply have added a couple more carriages to the train, but with these modern, hi-tech units you can't, apparently, do that.

We were staying at The Glasshouse, which is a splendid place with a beautiful roof garden surmounted by a glass pavilion, lawns and walkways, overlooking historic Calton Hill and with vistas right over the rooftops of the city. Except that we couldn't see them because of a persistent, grey drizzle. The guests, however, in dogged Scottish spirit, arrived anyway and we conducted a blind tasting of wines from the DOs Yecla, Bullas and (mainly) Jumilla, followed by a walk-round tasting to meet the winemakers accompanied by excellent tapas cooked by a team of chefs flown in from Murcia and headed up by Juan-Antonio Pellicer. The details of the tasting will appear on the blog shortly as part of JOHN RADFORD'S WINEWIRE.

Part of the Glasshouse roof garden, pavilion in the background. Pic.: Glasshouse website

Also on the Tuesday I received an interesting e-mail from the Wine Society, but more of that in a subsequent post ('The Holy Grail'). Edinburgh went well and I hitched a lift to Manchester with Adrian Jones, the Murcia trade department's 'ambassador' in the UK.

The Manchester tasting was at Grado, Paul Heathcote's Spanish restaurant/tapas bar on trendy New York Street, and was something of a sell-out (except, of course, being a trade and press tasting it was free), with more than 40 people for the tutored tasting and several dozen more for the walk-around. This was later in the day than the Edinburgh event (on the assumption that people didn't have to travel so far to be there) and culminated in a tapas dinner accompanied by a guitar duo from Murcia - a very civilised occasion. One of the exhibitors, Pedro Luís Martínez, opened a bottle of his 1925 'solera' Monastrell which will go on sale in the autumn for, he estimates, about €600 a bottle. We queued up to taste it in thimblesful.

The €600 Monastrell Mistela 1925

Grado is an excellent place - I did a presentation there when it opened, and it's a worthy part of the Paul Heathcote 'empire'.

Post-tasting entertainment at Grado

Then it was back home on the Friday and a very comfortable trip to Euston on one of Virgin Trains' Voyagers, which provide free Wifi and an electric socket, even in second class. On the whole it was an excellent week, and the guests seemed to enjoy the wines which, we may hope, will result in new business for the exporters.