Alberto Chicote.
"If I see a guy mistreating a sole, I'll shit the bitch"
File.
Read more interviews from the Back Cover of EL MUNDO
(Marín, Pontevedra, 1957).
General Director of Contents of Telecinco and
gastronomic
roadrunner
.
In
Word of Wine
(Deep Waters Books) he portrays 32 characters with whom he has conversed while drinking wine.
How did you become the 'gastronomic roadrunner'? When
Nius
, Telecinco's digital newspaper, was
born
, its director, Pedro Valentín, knew about my love of traveling around the Spanish geography in search of gastronomy. In
Nius
I began to recount my adventures, when I was traveling to eat at that restaurant or to visit a winemaker friend, to describe those experiences. And how did the book come about? When the lockdown came, I had some of those trips on file. But it seemed to me that I could not go around counting them while people were at home frightened and scared, living in a very extreme situation. And it occurred to me, with the explosion of video calls, to grab a bottle of wine, call friends and tell us about the troubles. The first ones I called, who are not the first ones listed in the book, were people related to the world of wine:
Pitu
Roca (the middle of the Roca brothers) and Agustín Santolaya, general manager of Roda and in my opinion one of the guys who best teaches La Rioja. But in his book, in addition to people from the world of wine, there are writers, actresses, athletes, doctors, businessmen, chefs, pastry chefs, musicians ... I started looking for other people, because it seemed to me that the world of wine could be very boring for those who are not particularly interested. I decided to go one step further and look for people who were not specifically from the world of wine but who are interested in wine, such as Alejandro Sanz, who likes wine a lot and who is also undertaking a wine project on his estate in Jarandilla de he will see her. He likes wines a lot, we have mutual friends, and then it occurred to me to incorporate people who talk about the character, who describe him, into the conversation,that tells an anecdote, an experience of his ... After Alejandro came Alfonso Carrascosa, who was president of Legalitas, who now lives in the United States and who has a Burgundy winery that has the layout of high jewelery, something never seen in a private winery. There are wineries like this in some restaurants, but not in a private house. How did you select the characters? Randomly, although I have tried to make them characters with different professions. Some occurred to me because I suddenly remembered that they had a story. Amancio López Seijas, president of the Hotusa-Eurostars group and I know each other a lot, he is also Galician, and he remembered his story of how he came to Barcelona and how he truly made himself to run a hotel emporium. Others occurred to me because at that moment they were going to take out a book,to produce a movie or premiere a television series. This is the case of Juan Echanove, with a series called
Disappeared
and a program for Amazon and for Mediaset called
From life to the plate
and which was the story of eight restaurants. The characters emerged depending on the current situation or because I remembered an interesting story about them. To portray the characters in his book, he has spoken with people close to them, including, for example, Julio Iglesias ... The characters do not know with whom I'm going to talk, it's a surprise and they only know it when they read it. The other day it happened to me with Jabois, who is not in the book because the book includes only the first 34 encounters and then I have continued to write others. I surprised Jabois with the first director he had in the
Diario de Pontevedra
, the uncle who discovered him and my friend, because we work together in the Galician regional radio. Jabois called me very excited for having incorporated Antón Galocha into the conversation. In the case of Julio Iglesias, I knew he was a friend of Alfonso Carrascosa and it was Antonio Lucas who made contact for me. Julio took great care of me and he is also a great wine fan and a deep connoisseur of French wines. And how did you become interested in the world of wine? In the book he tells that his grandfather and father introduced him to him ... My father was a sailor. Now he is a very old man, already retired for 36 years, but he was a sailor all his life. My grandfather was a farmer, a farmer from the rural part of Marín, a fishing village, and he was very fond of wine. My grandfather died when I was 14 years old,but the image I have of him is with corduroy trousers and pruning shears in his back pocket, he was tending the vineyards all day. He really liked talking about the land and he was one of those people with enormous intuition, with wisdom above knowledge. I knew for example when it was going to rain because of how the air smelled, I knew that one year the flowering was going to come late because the temperature was not right, because May hadbecause May hadbecause May had
marched
and March had
maye
. I spent many weekends with him and he taught me to love the land and to know how to listen to it. And that's where my love for wine started a bit. But since I was a child, she stayed numb until I reached a more adult age and realized that behind the wine there were a lot of stories. As
Pitu
says
Roca, wine not only portrays the landscape but it has a history, and I think it also portrays those who do it.
Some are humble, others arrogant, others haughty, others generous ... And does wine also portray the one who drinks it?
Are we what we drink? A good company can improve a wine.
When you are in good company, you enjoy wine more and it may even seem to you that it tastes better.
It's like a meal: there are after-dinner meals that enhance a meal.
I also believe that memory shapes memories, that in the end you end up shaping them, and the perception of the wine that often remains is where you have drunk it, how you have drunk it, how much you have enjoyed it, with whom ...
I invite people who drink soft drinks to try easy-drinking wines
And in this busy world in which we live, where everything is going a thousand an hour, is that culture of a well-talked about wine, of a good after-dinner being lost? Yes, and I think it has to be recovered. Wine is slow, it requires a process that goes from year to year with its different times, with its different stages: pruning, flowering, harvest ... Wine marks the passage of time. One of the things I like about wine is the slowness. Even to drink it you have to have time: the wine has to be opened, it has to breathe, it has to speak, you have to let it express itself. It must also be because I am a Galician, and Galicians know how to wait. As we are at the bottom of the country, where the sun arrives last and leaves last, we are a land of waiting, Galicians know how to wait very well. That time of waiting, almost of patience and slowness,I like it, because I think speed is the enemy of precision. Wines in Spain have improved a lot, right? It is difficult to find bad wines ... Very much. But good wines are actually the ones you like. One day one of the gods of wine in Spain, Mariano García, told me about it. I asked him what the best wine in Spain was. "The one you like," he replied. And so it is. There may be very good wines that you don't like and there may be more irregular wines that you like. It is true that in Spain we have grown a lot in the world of wine and it is already difficult to find a bad wine. Even in areas where the tradition was to make bulk wines, very tough wines, very industrial, now very refined wines are made. And there are also areas that have grown a lot:For example, many people begin to say that Galicia would be the Burgundy of Spain, because of that profile of very Burgundian wines, very sharp, with a very controlled acidity but very easy to drink, very sweet. What we still need is to know how to sell ourselves? Spanish wines have obtained a lot of international recognition, the great wine guides have given Spanish wines very good places. And it is true that in some markets the arrival of the Chinese, who have been buying everything, has left room to discover high-end Spanish wines at very competitive prices. But yes, in the international market we still have one more step to take. Is the liturgy important in the world of wine? The liturgy, as Pablo Neruda's postman said in Michael Radford's film about poetry, is for those who need it.It is true that wine has a liturgy, some wines should be decanted, others open so that they can express themselves, so that they can take their place and place, so that they can talk. I like to have a certain liturgy with certain wines. I like to look for the wine for the occasion, look for the wine outlined for the person with whom you are going to eat. Each wine has a liturgy that is imposed by the moment, the person or the wine's own leitmotif. What have you learned by writing this book? One is always learning, there is not a day that does not bring you a teaching. Some of the characters in the book have taught me many things. I have learned, for example, the value of conversation, I have learned how loneliness is shared in a period of confinement as long as the one we have had, how to live such a terrible period of crisis.And I have also learned many things about the wine itself, how a small detail makes a wine have a lot of value. Galicianness, Galicianism, is very present in the book ... I am very Galician, Galicia always goes with me. My good friend and almost brother Manolo Rivas says that memory is nomadic, that it travels with you wherever you go. I have never been able to get rid of Galicia, it has always traveled with me. Probably because I have learned a lot in my land and mine. Galicians are very much our own, very much a tribe, very much like going together. I answer a lot with riddles, with teachings, with Galician proverbs. Much has been written about wine, there are millions of quotes, of sayings. In the book there is specifically a quote from Ortega y Gasset, who was asked one day what glory meant to him, and he answered categorically: "A pleasant after-dinner."Ortega's quote seems wonderful to me. A pleasant after-dinner is the glory, there is no better definition. Almost everyone has written about wine: Quevedo, Neruda, Chinese poets, Persian poets ... I really like that breadth of wine that goes from the most refined literature (it is easy to find references to wine in the
Quixote
or in the books of Shakespeare) to the most popular proverbs and adages or tavern conversations. There is a very large glossary around wine. My book is called
El vino y la voz
because I think the two things go hand in hand, not only because of the conversation, but also because of the literary framework around wine. Is wine something for the rich? No i do not believe it. On the contrary: it has become very democratized. Yes there was a time when it was a very refined thing, typical of counts and marquises who gave their names to wines, but now it is something very democratic. In the book there is an example: a wine that Manolo Rivas and I drank called Predicador and that is from a winery in La Rioja, Benjamín Romeo, which makes wines at impossible prices. Watching
The pale rider
, that vigilante who was Clint Eastwood, Benjamin Romeo came up with the idea of making a cheaper wine, with more democratic prices, so that people could access the wine of a great winemaker and winemaker.
And he brought out that wine, which is called Preacher after the preacher
in Clint Eastwood's
The Pale Rider
.
Today you don't have to spend a lot of money to drink good wines.
Not everything is invented in wine.
There are things left to teach
The wine that is drunk with each of the 34 characters that parade through your book, did you choose it, did the guest choose it or did they agree on it?
There have been of all colors.
In the case, for example, of Josep
Pitu
Roca, as he knows that I am very Galician, went to his winery and brought a bottle of a wine from an area called Monterrei. Winemakers usually choose their wines, and also it would seem an insult to me to propose something different. Others we have agreed upon, we reached a common and cordial understanding. And in some cases they have unloaded that responsibility on me. Belén Rueda, for example, is not a heavy drinker, she has a glass of wine very occasionally, but she likes everything that happens around wine a lot. I asked him to choose the wine, and I chose a rosé from La Rioja. As Bethlehem was also about to release
Penelope
In Mérida, I told myself that I had to look for a wine that had a beautiful history. And that wine has a wonderful story, because a cherry tree appears on the label and Isaac Muga, the winemaker, told me that it was a cherry tree that was in his grandmother's orchard and that when it began to bloom, his grandmother would cut a twig and that branch , in a vase, it presided over the entrance of his house throughout the spring. It is a very delicate and beautiful story, and the wine is very delicate, made in a very Provencal way, and that is why I chose it for Belén Rueda. Is there any wine that you don't like? There are wines that I like more than others. And there have been wines that I hoped would give me things that they haven't given me. And vice versa: there are wines that have surprised me and have given me things that I did not expect, their landscape, their land, their spirit, their nerve. Fashions,Do they harm the wine? I think there is also a lot of posturing around wine, many ways of dressing up in front of the wine. I believe that you have to arrive at wine, like all things in life, with humility, willing to taste, learn, look, and browse. Curiosity in the world of wine is very necessary, you have to be curious to know, to taste ... I don't know about wines, those who make them know about wines, those who have dedicated their lives to the world of wine. Custodio López Zamarra orof wines know those who make them, those who have dedicated their lives to the world of wine. Custodio López Zamarra orof wines know those who make them, those who have dedicated their lives to the world of wine. Custodio López Zamarra or
Pitu
Roca, for example, are true masters, they know a lot about wine. Custodio says the first word he learned to say in his life was "wine." The wines are presented to me, I know them, I drink them and I am curious to know about them. There are real hidden treasures. Recently, on a visit to Galicia, I discovered a very small winery that makes almost garage wines, as they can do in some places in Burgundy or in certain areas of France on the banks of the Loire, and I discovered a wonderful wine. With wines you have to be humble, a desire to learn and a lot of curiosity. Does wine taste richer if you know the history behind it? It is difficult to love what you do not know. You can light a flash, a spark, a lightning on the water as Wim Wenders said.But when you love something it is because you truly know it. Love is knowledge. When you know things, when you penetrate them, it is when you truly love them and when you discover things, when wine invades you and possesses you. Has the wine culture grown in Spain? I think it has. The statistics say that consumption per person has dropped, and I think that has a lot to do with other drinks and with the way of life. But I think that people who are interested in wine, as has also happened with gastronomy, like to know what it is talking about. I would say that more than knowledge has increased interest. Those who eat with a soda, do they commit a mortal sin? Everyone can do what they want, I respect the wishes of others. I don't usually eat with soft drinks, I don't like it, it seems to me that the sweetness of soft drinks kills many flavors.When someone asks for a soda, I invite them to try something else. I remember a wonderful scene from the movie
Martin (Hache)
, in the Café Gijón, in which Federico Luppi, putting a bottle of Vega Sicilia on the table, tells Juan Diego Botto, whose character has a series of addictions, that if he wants to get high, he should try that. I invite people who drink soft drinks to try easy-drinking wines. Climate change, is it affecting wines? Yes, everyone says it and we see it. The alcohol content has increased, you just have to see how the temperature rises in some places. That is also why I believe that there has been a certain shift in the tastes of many Spaniards towards more nervous wines, more jumping, to put it in some way, such as wines from areas such as El Bierzo or the Ribeira Sacra. In the world of wine, is everything already invented? Nowhere is everything invented, there is always something of chance that ends up discovering something for you.Everything is born either by chance or by necessity. Not everything is invented in wine. There are many things said, because wine goes back to a very, very old history. But I think there are still things to say about wine, things to teach. Is France still the great reference? In France there is a great wine culture and it has truly wonderful, ancestral and highly reputed wine regions throughout the world. France has earned a place in the sun, and deservedly too. France is the great wine country. Although wine was born in the Middle East, you could say that France started all this after-dinner and wine. And France continues to maintain the leadership, because it still has that tradition of small producers, of areas where people live very much around wine, where a wine has an absolute centrality,with wisdoms that pass from father to son and that come from grandparents, very ancient vineyards, lands very crossed by wine. I also think that they have also managed to fit that ancestry very well with modern times. What wine would you choose to drink with Telecinco, your chain? Well, a fun wine, easy to drink, because Telecinco has a very clear agreement with the public, it is a very direct, very close and very immediate television station. I would choose a Rioja wine with carbonic maceration, very sparkling, with a certain electricity. And with Rocío Carrasco, the great media character at this time of Telecinco, what would you drink? With Rocío Carrasco, who I know has on occasion been a herald of a wine festival in Galicia, I would drink a wine from the Ribeira Sacra, because I know that it has been there and because I know that it likes it.very ancient vineyards, lands very crossed by wine. I also think that they have also managed to fit that ancestry very well with modern times. What wine would you choose to drink with Telecinco, your chain? Well, a fun wine, easy to drink, because Telecinco has a very clear agreement with the public, it is a very direct, very close and very immediate television station. I would choose a Rioja wine with carbonic maceration, very sparkling, with a certain electricity. And with Rocío Carrasco, the great media character at this time of Telecinco, what would you drink? With Rocío Carrasco, who I know has on occasion been a herald of a wine festival in Galicia, I would drink a wine from the Ribeira Sacra, because I know that it has been there and because I know that it likes it.very ancient vineyards, lands very crossed by wine. I also think that they have also managed to fit that ancestry very well with modern times. What wine would you choose to drink with Telecinco, your chain? Well, a fun wine, easy to drink, because Telecinco has a very clear agreement with the public, it is a very direct, very close and very immediate television station. I would choose a Rioja wine with carbonic maceration, very sparkling, with a certain electricity. And with Rocío Carrasco, the great media character at this time of Telecinco, what would you drink? With Rocío Carrasco, who I know has on occasion been a herald of a wine festival in Galicia, I would drink a wine from the Ribeira Sacra, because I know that it has been there and because I know that it likes it.I also think that they have also managed to fit that ancestry very well with modern times. What wine would you choose to drink with Telecinco, your chain? Well, a fun wine, easy to drink, because Telecinco has a very clear agreement with the public, it is a very direct, very close and very immediate television station. I would choose a Rioja wine with carbonic maceration, very sparkling, with a certain electricity. And with Rocío Carrasco, the great media character at this time of Telecinco, what would you drink? With Rocío Carrasco, who I know has on occasion been a herald of a wine festival in Galicia, I would drink a wine from the Ribeira Sacra, because I know that it has been there and because I know that it likes it.I also think that they have also managed to fit that ancestry very well with modern times. What wine would you choose to drink with Telecinco, your chain? Well, a fun wine, easy to drink, because Telecinco has a very clear agreement with the public, it is a very direct, very close and very immediate television station. I would choose a Rioja wine with carbonic maceration, very sparkling, with a certain electricity. And with Rocío Carrasco, the great media character at this time of Telecinco, what would you drink? With Rocío Carrasco, who I know has on occasion been a herald of a wine festival in Galicia, I would drink a wine from the Ribeira Sacra, because I know that it has been there and because I know that it likes it.your chain? Well, a fun wine, easy to drink, because Telecinco has a very clear agreement with the public, it is a very direct, very close and very immediate television station. I would choose a Rioja wine with carbonic maceration, very sparkling, with a certain electricity. And with Rocío Carrasco, the great media character at this time of Telecinco, what would you drink? With Rocío Carrasco, who I know has on occasion been a herald of a wine festival in Galicia, I would drink a wine from the Ribeira Sacra, because I know that it has been there and because I know that it likes it.your chain? Well, a fun wine, easy to drink, because Telecinco has a very clear agreement with the public, it is a very direct, very close and very immediate television station. I would choose a Rioja wine with carbonic maceration, very sparkling, with a certain electricity. And with Rocío Carrasco, the great media character at this time of Telecinco, what would you drink? With Rocío Carrasco, who I know has on occasion been a herald of a wine festival in Galicia, I would drink a wine from the Ribeira Sacra, because I know that it has been there and because I know that it likes it.the great media character in these moments of Telecinco, what would he drink? With Rocío Carrasco, who I know has on some occasion been a herald of a wine festival in Galicia, I would drink a wine from the Ribeira Sacra, because I know that she has been there and because I know you like it.the great media character in these moments of Telecinco, what would he drink? With Rocío Carrasco, who I know has on some occasion been a herald of a wine festival in Galicia, I would drink a wine from the Ribeira Sacra, because I know that she has been there and because I know you like it.
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