ReMARKable Palate #248: Talking Cheese with Max McCalman
This week, I speak with cheese expert Max McCalman the Annual Fancy Food Show, where he was leading a seminar on Spanish cheeses, particularly the ubiquitous and sublime masterpiece that is Manchego cheese. We speak about Spain, the emergance of Partuguese cheeses, and the proliferation of artisanal cheeses made here in the United States. We also get into some food science and the politics of cheese in America.
Chef Mark continues his tour of La Boqueria Market with Barcelona expert George Semler, who wrote the Fodor’s guide to Barcelona. Here, George shows Chef Mark the fishmonger Pilarin, and they talk all things jamon!
This week, it’s a Smorgasbord of chefs, as I speak with Chef Jordi Artal of Cinc Sentits Restaurant in Barcelona about this Catalan food, then Chef Lee Anne Wong of Top Chef fame after a tofu cooking demo she did at the French Culinary Institute. It wouldn’t be a smörgåsbord without a Swedish chef! I also speak with Chef Danyel Couet from F12 Restaurant in Stockholm, who shared some of his dishes with us at Scandinavia House in NYC.
ReMARKable Palate #240: More Spanish Wines from Alimentaria
Today, it’s more from my trip to Barcelona for the Alimentaria Show. First, I speak with Sonia Anglada Verges from Freixenet, the largest producer of Cava in the world. Then, it’s Ricardo Arambarri Perez from Vintae.com, which has wines form all over Spain. Finally, we speak with an American importer, Andrew Booth, from The Spanish Table, who was there to discover new products for the American Market.
Chef Mark gets a great one on one tour of La Boqueria Market in Barcelona from author, expert and travel writer George Semler. George explains the history of the market, takes us through some of his favorite stands, and introduces us to the great food at Pinotxo Bar. We’ll have more in the series soon.
Ryan Opaz interviews Nico James, a wine importer and distributor in Barcelona. Nico is a British/Caribbean expat living in Spain who imports German, Alsatian and Austrian wines into Spain. Ryan caught up with Nico at the Alimentaria Fair in Barcelona at the end of March. Here, Nico speaks about how he’s using the internet and his video blog to educate consumers, producers, and other importers about his wines and about the wine business in general.
We’ll be adding these English-language shows from Vinus and Catavino to our CMN lineup from time to time, and we’re pleased to welcome them as a content provider. They’ll have plenty of coverage of the upcoming European Wine Blogger’s Conference (EWBC) in Vienna, Austria, this coming October 22-24th, 2010.
Travel & accommodations provided by INCAVI. Blogger trip organized and administered by www.catavino.net.
Vinus.tv is a Spanish wine video site run by Eduardo Benito of winescreen.com, which normally produces all it’s content in Spanish. Catavino.net partners with Vinus.tv to produce videos in English at Wine events of interest to an English-Speaking audience. Well, since Chef Mark interviewed Ryan and Gabriella Opaz from Catavino for the ReMARKable Palate Podcast, turnabout is fair play!
We’ll be adding these English-language shows from Vinus and Catavino to our CMN lineup from time to time, and we’re pleased to welcome them as a content provider. They’ll have plenty of coverage of the upcoming European Wine Blogger’s Conference (EWBC) in Vienna, Austria, this coming October 22-24th, 2010.
We’ll be adding several other videos from Vinus to give a slightly different perspective to the coverage Chef Mark is doing about the visit to Catalunya. Bienvenidos!
Travel & accommodations provided by INCAVI. Blogger trip organized and administered by www.catavino.net.
We started out our Catalunya explorations the day before the start of Alimentaria with a visit to one of the largest wine producers anywhere, Freixenet. This is without a doubt the largest winery I’ve ever toured, and as the largest producer of Cava in Catalunya, they have quite a bit of demand to keep up with.
Freixenet is famous around the world for it’s Cordon Negro and Carta Nevada brands, which are mass market affordable cavas. Their yearly New Years ads featuring movie stars and musical acts are well known in Europe, and the familiar black bottle of the Cordon Negro can be found all over the States.
But Freixenet owns many wineries all over Spain and other parts of the world, producing a wide range of still and sparling wines. If you’ve traveled in the Sonoma Carneros region of California, you may be familiar with the Gloria Ferrer Winery, which is owned by Freixenet. The Ferrer family founded Freixenet, and continues to hold a stake to this day.
For lunch we tasted 6 different wines from their lineup, including a Rosé Cava made from Pinot Noir, an Albariño made in Rias Baixas, a Rosé from neighboring Montsant, A new wine, Oroya, made especially for sushi by a Japanese winemaker in Spain (composed of Airen, Macabeo and Moscatel grapes), and a 100% Malvasia Cava. The Malvasia is a dessert Cava with fruity notes, and a hint of maple and buttery pastry.
After lunch, we had a tour of their facility, with sections of the winery dating from 1914, and 4 subterranean levels where we got to see the ENORMOUS capacity of the facility, which produces 200 million bottles a year. The facility is so large, they take you around in a little “Cava Train” like at Hershey or a ride at Disneyland! Our guide was very knowledgable and quite charming. Here’s the video of the afternoon visit:
While in Barcelona for Alimentaria last week, I met with Gemma Urgell, a journalist, writer and PR rep for Catalan wines and food products. In addition to representing some really cool folks who are working on a project to produce black truffles commercially in Catalunya (which will generate truffles as well as protect the natural eco-system), Gemma is co-founder of NuestraCausa, a citizen movement that aims to increase citizen’s voice in policy decisions in Catalunya. She interviewed me on camera for her #talkingabout project, which features people talking about their passions, jobs, dreams, and projects to change the world. It looks like I was just spouting off for 5 minutes, but in reality Gemma edited this down from a 20 minute conversation we had in both English and Spanish. She just kept the parts of me talking in English about the use of Social Media to discuss food and wine, and how wineries can better use the web.
I’ll have much more content from this trip, not only the discussion of social media, but our regular food and wine focused content about my discoveries in Catalunya & Barcelona’s La Boqueria market. For now, you can find great roundups of the week from Catavino.net, which has a great feed gathering all the content created by the participating bloggers during the course of the week and ongoingly:
ReMARKable Palate #238: Barcelona & Social Media with Catavino.net
I’ve just returned from Barcelona, Spain, where I was a guest of Ryan And Gabriella Opaz from Catavino.net, as we explored the Alimentaria fair, the Empordas wine region, and the food sights of Barcelona. Here we discuss the week, and how they are changing the Spanish wine world by using Social Media. www.catavino.net
ReMARKable Palate #248: Talking Cheese with Max McCalman
