Jilly Goolden holding a bottle of Primitivo Quiles Fondillon
Jilly Goolden tastes wines from the Comunidad Valenciana at the Homes & Gardens Exhibition in Alicante
A happy set of coincidences, deriving from my parallel enthusiasm for British beer in general and my relations with The Little Beer Company in particular, saw winesofvalencia.com being asked, at short notice, to arrange for the provision of wines for Jilly Goolden's celebrity tasting sessions at the Homes & Gardens Exhibition at the Institución Ferial Alicantina (IFA) on 26-27 May 2007. My first thought was that it would be good to represent the three Denominaciones de Origen (Alicante, Utiel-Requena and Valencia) and something of the wide variety of wines produced in the Comunidad Valenciana. I also needed the bodegas to help me out above and beyond providing the wines, in terms of decorating the stands, providing glasses and the like. So I turned to some favourites from this site's "Some People and Places" pages: Emilio Clemente (with their great sage Joan Martín), Primitivo Quiles (as they are from Alicante and make classic Alicante ), Vicente Gandia (as the giant provider of familiar Valencian wines around the world, and with fantastic help from Herman Potgieter who's working there while finishing his wine studies) and the small but perfectly formed Dominio de la Vega (both for their prize-winning Cavas from Utiel-Requena and their range of red and white still wines). I actually hadn't had any previous dealings with Dominio de la Vega, but they were so friendly and efficient that it felt as if I'd known them all my life. My brief was to get five whites and five reds, but I managed to push for six of each and sneak a rosé into the whites, both because rosés are very much back in fashion and the region makes some excellent examples. For the record, here's the full list in pretty much their natural tasting sequence:
Cava - Dominio de la Vega Brut Nature Whites (and one rosé) - Añacal (Dominio de la Vega) Florante (Emilio Clemente) El Miracle (Vicente Gandia) Hoya de Cadenas rosé (Vicente Gandia) Moscatel Dulce (Primitivo Quiles) Reds (and a Fondillón) - Peñas Negras (Emilio Clemente) Dominio de la Vega Madurado en Barrica Hoya de Cadenas Bobal Viñas Viejas (Vicente Gandia) Dominio de la Vega Crianza Emilio Clemente Crianza Raspay (Primitivo Quiles) Fondillón (Primitivo Quiles)
I was a bit nervous as I have no experience of these events, apart from a few stints in the very different environment of the Frankfurt Book Fair, and even less of dealing with celebrities and was worried that Jilly might be a bit fierce. It had been impressed upon me the importance of ensuring the wines should be available in her hotel room for her to taste on arrival late on Friday night. The problem was that I was also dealing with four very different bodegas and it was a bit like herding cats. My new great friend Paco Quiles, of the latest generation of the Primitivo Quiles dynasty, was keen to show me his beloved Alicante. By the time I managed to guide us back to the hotel after midnight, I was sure Jilly would be there stamping her elegant foot, but by great good fortune she was slightly delayed and we beat her by a crucial minute and were able to present her with the wines, tasting glasses and vital corkscrew. Then it was back out with Paco and the bright lights of Alicante till all hours.
The next morning I breakfasted mightily, knowing it was likely to be a long day, called Jilly in her room, and she'd been doing her stuff, tasting and slurping the wines in her dressing gown for a good while and we arranged to meet at the fair. At the stands, Vicente Gandia and Emilio Clemente had done a good job of decorating the spaces the day before, and we were ready to go. Jilly arrived very kindly carrying the bottles she'd opened, as she hates to see good wine go to waste, just like the rest of us. This made me warm to her from the beginning. We decided to mix and match reds and whites (plus the rosé) for the tastings, choosing five or so for each of the four daily tasting sessions, and once Jilly was miked up the public came swarming like bees round a honeypot. Jilly began the tastings, as this was by no means a wine event, by giving an introductory chat about how to taste wine (looking first at the colour against a white background, the vital importance of smell, and then giving it a good slurp around the mouth on first tasting). The public loved it, and then we progressed along the wines in conventional fashion - starting with the dryest whites (or the Cava) moving to the sweeter, then beginning with the younger and lighter reds on up to the fuller and older bottles. We generally finished, to my delight, with a taste of Alicante's unique and historic Fondillón, which Jilly immediately got the point of and got down busily to asking Paco Quiles all about how it's made and its tradition. The visitors were generally well-behaved, if occasionally overfamiliar, as when I heard Jilly's reply "That really is a bit personal" to what I later discovered had been the enquiry "Are you wearing a thong?"
I'd suspected from the first that the glasses would be a problem, and sure enough we were down from sixty to thirty after that first tasting session. Off I went, and managed to get some small beer tasting cups from the generous Little Beer Company. We were also helped immeasurably by being allowed to use the refrigerated lorries of the Fonicatel Arms near us in the Expo to keep whites and the rosé chilled. With the various bodegas also collaborating well, it felt like an exercise in comradeship for the common cause of Comunidad Valenciana wine. I did manage to persuade good old Paco that evening to take me to Carrefour, where I was able to buy ninety-six wine glasses for just under forty euros, so that was a weight off my mind for the next day. We finished off with a birthday party at the fair for Dawn Charlton (former British lightweight body-building champion, so very sweet but not to be messed with - it never crossed my mind to ask her age, for instance) of Gem Spain, the organizers of the event, where her husband Charlie and my friend Paco got on so well that Charlie sealed their friendship by buying twenty-four bottles of Primitivo Quiles wine.
The next day was more relaxed as we had the set-up pretty much off pat - I just had to remember to replenish the white wines in the refrigerated van. I do have to mention the incredibly helpful sound engineer, Manolo Wilvur of Espectáculos Wilvur, who way above and beyond the call of duty, when I told him that we were running out of paper to cover the tasting tables, got straight on his phone and asked one of his people delivering bouncy castles in the province to pick some up from a restaurant and bring it to us. He also had a way with the English ladies, kissing Jilly's hand effusively at every opportunity and even charming four chocolate magdalena's from a stand run by a no nonsense northern lass. As for Jilly, she had not only had a good sleep on Saturday night, but during the course of the morning was offered both a foot massage and a haircut by other stands, so was feeling rather more pampered than I could have achieved on my own. I was also impressed by her willing submission to requests for photos, interviews, signing things for charity auctions, picking raffle winners and so on - very much a trouper, and she was returning home to work on the Bank Holiday Monday in preparation for her forthcoming ITV series ("Britain's Best Dish", if I remember). To my surprise, when TKO FM radio asked Jilly for an interview, they extended the invitation to me. I followed Jilly and celebrity chef Kevin Woodford, and you could immediately see why they were media figures and I wasn't. They had an anecdote for every question and chatted gaily away, while when it came to me I could hear myself boring on as usual. Still, it was an experience.
The event ended with Jilly, Paco, me and Handy Andy Kane (celebrity DIY wiz) enjoying some of the Little Beer Co.'s wares and the feeling that the event had gone well, and that more Brits knew more about the wines of the Valencia region than had been the case two days previously, and liked what they'd discovered. All thanks to the allure of Jilly Goolden. I hope we do it all over again in a year's time. Salud, Jilly.
Jilly Goolden and Paco Quiles (Paco is on the left)
Jilly Goolden wowing the crowd
winesofvalencia.com - A personal look at the world of Valencian wine
