Wine and cheese pairings tour. The first step of this wine and cheese tour is wine.
Don’t you listen and feel the fauna and flora in this vineyard? Finca Las Caraballas.
It was quite an unusual tour, but many tours we are doing are becoming more and more unusual, which is wonderful. I am still surprised by the variety of trips.
On this occasion, we would go to two very young projects. Two projects that started during the crisis.
A great example for other entrepreneurs.
By one side Finca Las Caraballas , in Medina del Campo. A winery that when you intend to visit they propose you to go exclusively to the vineyard, because, as they say, everything that should be seen happens in there
Presentation of Finca Las Caraballas winery.
I have heard hundreds of times how important things happen in the vineyard, but in the end, when we get into the winery, part of this kind of message changes a little bit.
But as we visit more and more wineries we realize that more and wonderful wines are made in wineries with facilities in which everything to be said is on their wines and some stories behind.
To enjoy such kinds of visits you have to be with your senses very open, because its particularity, personality, and sense of taste may be missed by a cursory glance.
On the visit to Finca las Caraballas they spoke of how far they had gone to reconstruct the environment.
Elias accompanies us on our visit to the vineyard. And the most attractive was that the first middle hour we nearly did not talk about wine or vineyards but environment recovery, birds, soil recovery.
We felt at this moment as if we were the protagonists of a wildlife tv program.
The vineyard had an exceptional look (and it was a very sunny day) Everything was ok. Starting to do the pruning. What we were seeing was shocking and exciting but a question arises whether there is already a response of nature to such an effort.
You have done a fantastic job in favor of nature. Has there been any response from nature?
The answer to this was:
Don’t you listen and feel the fauna and flora in this vineyard? Do you want me to take you to a conventional now so that you perceive the difference?
We feel much better respecting and recovering habitat. And we think, and so the market has said to us that the grapes of our wines taste again to real grapes, and so happens to our wines that taste again like the old wines of Rueda.
We didn´t do anything special. Just what our fathers did to care for and maintain the vineyards. We are not exceptional. It is the crazy world we live in, that makes us exceptional, and every day more people are aware of this philosophy.
We did a wine tasting in the vineyard, and we realized firsthand that Las Caraballas wine is something special, that tastes like Rueda wines used to taste. A fantastic experience.
And I am one more. One more who enjoys tomatoes tasting to true tomatoes and grapes to true grapes and that birds and animals of all kind can be there.
And I also realize that my body asks me to eat not only tastier but healthier. And I would like for my children to have a setting as beautiful and attractive as I´ve lived.
For all of this I wish Finca Las Caraballas a great success and to become an example to be followed. An example of how to make a living doing a better world!
Second step. The second step of this wine and cheese tour is cheese.
The person who says it can’t be done should never interrupt the person who is doing it. T. Edison. Granja Cantagrullas.
When I met him the first time I thought of him as a smart man. After having visited I still think he is smart. But I think this is not his main virtue.
He considers himself he is stubborn.
Being stubborn is nor the same as being persistent. Stubborn is one that insists on an idea and does not get out of it. Persistent is somebody who seeks a target and does not stop until reaching it.
Presentation of Granja Cantagrullas.
I think that Ruben is, above all persistent and a warrior.
It is great to meet projects like Granja Cantagrullas, with people deciding on being an entrepreneur in places where it seems impossible.
Granja Cantagrullas is groundbreaking in many ways.
You walk into the farm and enter into a different world.
They started with the project 18 months ago, in the middle of the crisis.
Ruben tells us that everything we see on the farm was made with his own hands. He was the building manager and the builder at the same time. And he has done a great job in building it.
After knowing this I looked very attentively looking for defects but everything was perfectly done.
Granja Cantagrullas was the first to get a license in Spain to produce cheese from raw milk.
He tried to sell in the area. Initially with 6 types of cheese but he failed on selling any. There about 30 cheese farms around the area and the locals are used to buy the type of cheese these 30 farms do.
Then he succeeded in selling cheese in specialized shops in Madrid but his rotation was not very high.
And then a great restorer appeared in his life. (a two-star Michelin). This man got delighted with the way Cantagrullas worked. And he began to talk about it to others.
Since then, many restaurateurs of the highest level in Madrid and Barcelona got in contact with him. Word of mouth began to work for him as a big snowball.
His success, that is what he says, comes from trying to do things nobody was doing, of being different, using french techniques that were not yet in Spain.
And then he started to work with first level restaurateurs making cheese by the order. The restorer works together with Granja Cantagrullas into the definition and the elaboration of his specific product.
Ruben admits that he is enjoying a lot because every project is a new challenge for him that pushes him to be the best version of himself.
The great restaurateurs are frequently changing his letter and so he has to change his cheeses. His activity has nothing to do with what other cheesemakers do by selling month after month the same products. In his case, he is in perpetual evolution. Exciting!
Nowadays there are about 1000 people a month visiting his farm, and many media are talking about him.
We propose you to come to one of our Madrid Wine tours
Written by:
Ignacio Segovia
CEO of Winebus.es
