September Weekend in Catalonia

Dear Devon,

The sudden snowstorm last week caught me by surprise. I found myself wholly unprepared for the onslaught of sleet and wet snow. Tromping around Midtown in a pair of canvas sneakers, I was longing for hot September weekends in the Catalan countryside. It seems almost cruel now to flip through my photos, when out my window, the changing leaves are blowing wildly in the wind.

A few weekends before my departure from Europe, I was fortunate enough to be a guest at a friends’ country home in the Montsant region of Catalonia. The dark green shrubbery and rocky terrain reminded me of the twisty mountainous stretch that winds down to Half Moon Bay in California. The soil, rich in slate, supports a broad spectrum of agriculture from hazelnuts and almonds to peaches and olives. But, the area is probably most famous for its almost endless rows of vines, heavy with clusters of grapes when I arrived in late September.

I have a weakness for small town celebrations. The allure of the annual wine festival was irresistible. Sporting the light tan of a city dweller, I popped out into the unrelenting sun of the country and threw myself into the boozy mix of red wine and heat.

The whole town, and neighboring towns, crowded into the narrow streets of the twelve street village of Poboleda. Baskets of raw hazelnuts, bunches of grapes, and porrones filled with wine welcomed visitors and locals alike. A band of twenty or so Priorat-based wineries set up small tasting tables in the stone archways that lined the central arteries of town. After a few glasses of wine, the crisp mountain water from the town fountain was a welcome relief in the 90 degree heat. The morning’s festivities concluded with a late lunch: a large paella (it fed over 500 people) and green salad.

The rest of the weekend was spent in relative tranquility. In the morning, we enjoyed a filling breakfast of hot chocolate and pastry before heading out to the family vegetable garden. Soon, baskets loaded with freshly harvested beans, tomatoes, beets, lettuces, carrots and squash found their way into the trunk of the car. I wandered off to gather blackberries which grew in a tangle of thorns and thin branches along the banks of the creek.

My visit ended with the weekly Sunday lunch at a friend’s mother’s table. She had prepared a spectacular assortment of finger foods followed by three courses of rustic country home cooking with vegetables grown in her garden and meat hunted by her husband.

Fira Lactium: Vic

Dear Devon,

Last November, fresh off of six weeks of intensive Spanish lessons, I tested my new skills at my first Barcelona dinner party. Seated with eight other guests around a large wooden table and a generous dinner of wild mushroom risotto and braised chard, I listened to the excited chatter. The conversations moved quickly and fluidly. I strung together snippets of phrases and pieces of dialogue, my tongue stilled by their effortless chatter.

The conversation shifted to food, specifically cheese. One cheese-loving guest praised a soft, fragrant cheese from the Basque Country in emotional terms, finally pounding his fist on table in excitement and frustration with the gentle teasing of our fellow table companions. I had to interrupt. How often do I run across such an ardent cheese enthusiast? That’s when he told me where to find cheese heaven, otherwise known as the Fira Lactium in Vic, the largest town in the Catalan comarca of Osona. Like Christmas, it comes only once a year in May. I jotted down the details and even made a note in my calendar to remind myself to look for the fair in April. Six months later we were on a train headed north to the Fira Lactium.


Vic was in the full throws of its Saturday market, but the big event of the day was the cheese fair. Vegans and lactose-intolerants be warned: This is glorious dairy indulgence. I was warned to restrain myself to avoid overwhelming my tastebuds. The sour, flowery, rich smell of cheese was everywhere, as were the samples! Producers’ stands lined the street and a temporary eating hall had been erected at the heart of the fair.

When we arrived, the cheese competition was in full swing. Four tables of judges scribbling, sniffing, poking, and eating cheese filled most of the tent. Two sample plates with an assortment of hot and cold cheeses were being sold. Buying both of these meant trying sixteen different cheeses. For our panel of three, these two plates were more than enough. One cheese in particular had our heads spinning. We brought the sample to the front to ask for more details, only to be told that since the competition was still in progress, the name and origin of the cheese could not be revealed. Undeterred, we took our small sample to the each of the thirty-odd cheese stands, hoping the vendor would recognize his cheese. Unfortunately, this didn’t work either: We never did find our mystery cheese, but we boarded the train to Barcelona carrying artisanal yogurts, cheesecake, and of course, cheese.

The real surprise of the excursion was that we bumped into our fist-pounding friend, whom we found tasting the very same cheese from the Basque country that he had praised to us six months earlier.

Ripoll, Catalonia

Dear Devon,

As much as I love urban life, sometimes it is nice to know that an entirely different world awaits me only an hour’s drive from the city limits. In that spirit, we packed up a rental car with a few sandwich-making goodies including loaves of bread, cheese, chocolate (wait, that’s not for sandwiches), cured meats, and apples, and headed to the Pyrenees.

Fortunately, I was not pressed into service as a driver, so I lounged in the back seat, thoughts focused on the intermittently rocky and verdant scenery. Guided by an antique, but still serviceable road atlas and the most recent edition of Lonely Planet Spain (which we tried to ignore), we turned what started as a one-day excursion into a two-day affair. There was no definite plan, and no hotel reservation, no real discussion of endpoints or mealtimes.

We stopped around lunchtime in the town of Ripoll, famous for its Romanesque monastery. It was a beautiful day, so we parked at the train station, and grabbed our lunch and strolled into town. The Saturday market was in full swing. A dusty street was given over to mobile stands of hanging sausages, tubs of olives, crates of vegetables, and other sensual things that caught our attention before we could find our way to the monastic complex at the center of town.

Though we had dutifully brought our own lunches, the smell of slow roasted, herb spiced chicken at a truck parked on the market street was irresistible. For eight euros our humble sandwiches were upstaged by a piping hot roasted chicken, roughly cut by the vendor with a pair of large, and obviously very sharp scissors. Lacking utensils or napkins, we dove into our lunch. Ten minutes later, we were sitting on a bench in front of the church-museum, debating the merits of lunch versus cultural edification. Bellies full and a bit pleased with our lack of decorum, we crossed the street to the monastery, only to find the doors closed for… lunch. Undeterred, we found an empty table in the sun-filled plaza, ordered coffee, and spent two hours in relaxed conversation.

By the way, despite having been very enthusiastically restored a century ago, the monastery is worth the visit, even on non-market days.