01 00 21 07
A people who know themselves, whose feet are firmly on the soil they call ‘the land, or our earth or home…
01 00 36 20
…these people define themselves by the vines they’ve planted, the work they do and the food they eat…
01 00 49 03
This sense of ‘self’ stands against distant corporations which reduce everyone and everyplace to the same thing.
01 01 01 06
In this episode we go to north central Spain. Running between two mountain ranges flows the river or ‘Rio’ Oja, which gives its name to the region: Rioja.
01 01 16 12
Wine is central to the economy and culture but peppers ignite the appetite of the Riojana…peppers stuffed, in stews and salads…
01 01 15 17
…or as piquant spikes on a slice of local ham.
01 01 30 08
This man spoke of his love of the red pepper and how much more flavour they have than tomatoes.
01 01 38 17
The town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada has, since the 11th century, been dedicated to the welfare of travellers passing through on pilgrimages to holy sites further west.
01 01 48 20
The massive church and the hospital for the sick, now a fine hotel, still dominate the old town.
01 02 02 08
In a small workshop off the main street a group of family friends and relatives gather to clean their burnt peppers, washing away the blackened skins; leaving the fresh sweet flesh.
01 02 28 06
These towns draw sustenance from the surrounding rich damp soil.
01 02 32 24
In this climate, influenced by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, vegetables grow especially well.
01 02 41 15
Pulses and beans are dried for the winter and provide a distinct rich flavour to cold weather foods.
01 02 48 24
Chef Juan Mora of the Hotel or Paradore Santo Domingo de la Calzada buys local produce and cooks only seasonal ingredients.
01 03 00 04
Although he’s considered a foreigner-because he’s from further south in Spain, like the locals, he insists Riojan produce is particular in taste.
01 03 32 10
Juan prepares onion, leek, and a kind of borrage sautéed in olive oil, cooked down in local white wine and blended into a cream.
01 03 40 16
He said ‘cuisine, customs and traditions aren’t changing; people come from other countries to learn from the Riojan way of life.’
01 03 49 14
Chunks of pigs cheek and sweet scallops are sautéed in olive oil.
01 03 59 20
They are served with a drizzle of a red pepper sauce, the vegetable cream and a drop of olive oil; Juan’s lighter take on a classic autumn dish.
01 04 16 20
For whatever reasons- pride, isolation, wealth, or a simple love of family- Rioja is vibrant with a regional identity tasted at their table and heard in their songs.
01 04 45 11
Bean fields -where people are free to glean the remains left by the giant harvesters.
01 05 21 16
The huge machines leave behind thousands of beans…and unemployment.
01 05 31 14
Three people can do the work of 60.
01 05 42 11
The harvesters great weight compacts the earth causing rain water to run off and with it valuable top soil.
Does technical ‘progress’ mean ‘for the good of humanity’?
01 06 07 22
But this is autumn harvest time. In the villages people gather to celebrate. As the river binds the two sides of the valley together, the festivals bind the disparate farm and shop workers together. Priests and politicians work their way through the crowd and children partake in what will become their customs.
01 06 31 24
Down the street, at the fair, a young couple produce fried dough served hot -either plain, sprinkled with sugar or coated in chocolate.
01 06 58 18
The crusty outside and melting soft inner dough lures children and adults alike.
01 07 08 24
Always on the road-travelling, heavily pregnant, the work is tough.
01 07 27 24
Sunday dawn on the rising plain south of the Ebro River which flows through Rioja.
01 07 38 08
A few people in the village of Estollo prepare for the church service in the small Plaza Generalisimo.
01 07 47 09
An older person said; ‘my generation was dominated by the civil war and the priests. In school we were only taught to pray. If you missed Sunday mass it was a terrible punishment. It’s turned older people and our children against the church’.
01 08 01 15
He said ‘the gift of liberty that we’ve given the children is a great thing. Now the church has little power.’
01 08 14 10
But a few villagers still attend.
01 08 23 04
Meanwhile Santos Saézin tends his horta, a kitchen garden which provides food, necessary to villager’s with limited incomes.
01 08 31 03
From supermarkets they purchase a few staples –the food is expensive and Santos says ‘the flavour isn’t so good’.
01 08 40 15
He grows cabbages, onions, carrots, many fruits and of course peppers…
01 08 53 22
…but the figs…plump with oozing honeyed flesh..
01 09 02 09
Lordes, the daughter of Santos and Catalina prepares breaded pork sautéed in olive oil and peppers fried with garlic.
01 09 10 24
Catulina said: ‘until 1960 we had one light bulb on a long cable, it illuminated our whole house.’ Now we’ve got running water and a freezer…life’s easier but we’re losing our traditions’.
01 09 25 05
As Lordes serves a first course of macaroni with chorizo and pancetta, a salted bacon, she said her children are influenced by T.V. culture.
01 09 33 20
Nuria, her teenage daughter offered: ‘I want to buy things, travel and have a nice car…that’s wealth and riches’.
01 09 40 10
Santos said: ‘we used to make bread….but European Union grants meant the price was controlled- no profits for small bakers…another reason why young people move away.’
01 10 07 07
For Catalina her Rioja means freedom.
01 10 11 01
Santos said he could not imagine being without Rioja.
10 10 39 21
Peppers and more peppers… Javier Lafuente Zuñeda grows his own as ‘a natural product’.
01 10 47 17
He said ‘Chemically grown peppers may have taste but lack a human quality’.
‘I’m looking for an equilibrium between producer, consumer and the earth. I don’t use aggressive chemicals which burn the soil.’
01 11 01 06
After washing the peppers, beech wood ….which makes a clean hot flame with no resin, is used to fuel the tumbling furnace which burns the skins.
01 11 13 18
As the women peel the charred skins and pack the peppers, Javier explained: ‘To make this product you need an infrastructure which gives the opportunity for the young people to stay. The women come and go according to a schedule created by their children or chores.
01 11 36 00
Javier knows his limits of production are clearly defined. To go beyond he would lose the organic and artisanal nature; this would contradict his philosophy.
01 12 10 05
Juan Nales, one of the fine chefs of the region has a commercial baker provide him breads to Juan’s own recipe.
01 12 18 19
‘What we could source’, he said, ‘was too plain, too anonymous’.
01 12 27 05
His restaurant Las Duelas means ‘barrel staves’- which are cut by hand and fitted precisely….the same with Juan’s food.
01 12 37 15
His menu responds to the seasons as produce becomes available.
01 12 45 04
He sautés wild mushrooms in last years olive oil and end of summer tomatoes mixed into a Spanish rice.
01 12 55 22
These early autumn flavours will support a singed and roasted wild pigeon breast.
01 13 01 12
For Juan, cooking is using simple techniques to intensify taste.
01 13 08 08
His menu includes Riojana dishes because the freshest ingredients are the local ones best suited to those recipes.
01 13 15 02
He believes the heart of Riojan cooking is still in the small towns and villages.
01 13 20 00
Modern cooking is more healthy and lighter: he cooks vegetables separately and al dente to preserve their flavour.
01 13 28 02
Unlike local traditions he uses little bacon fat. His sauces are made from reduced and thickened stocks without flour .
01 13 37 17
Different chefs, different preoccupations: luxurious, essential, passionate or harmonious tastes, counterpoints, organics, naturalness.
01 13 56 19
Intense truthful flavours, dazzling colour as in this dish of rare venison…..these are Juan’s artful tools.
01 14 13 01
JUAN speaks: All my life I have worked for this…
01 14 15 00
JUAN:’I have studied for this…’
01 14 17 12
JUAN: ‘This is my life…
01 14 19 00
JUAN: ‘My passion.’
01 14 28 09
Every year in Haro, on the towns saint’s day, there is a mock war: people squirt wine at each other. Marta, one of the rare female patisserie chefs said “the statue of the saint sits on stones, so I’ve made symbolic ‘stones’ of hazelnuts, Rioja wine and chocolate’.
01 15 20 17
Martas’ devotion to her daughter and her clients is as clear as the cases in her shop where her confections are like a celebration.
01 15 37 18
These lambs, reared by Jesus and Justina de Treviana only feed on milk and are slaughtered at 25 days old.
They are sent to a renown traditional rustic restaurant, Terete in Haro which has been roasting lambs and suckling pigs since 1877.
01 16 08 07
Every morning Alberto, the eldest son, prepares the lambs for the wood oven.
01 16 14 03
The restaurant has always been in his family. Alberto said; ‘it’s difficult to keep up the traditions with so many European Union regulations-people can’t be bothered to provide the natural fields for the sheep or maintain the standard of supplies..’; life’s changing’.
01 16 30 14
The meat is cooked without seasoning or flavouring.
01 16 38 01
His father said: For me it’s not about the European Union but about people seeking profit and nothing else..
01 16 47 00
Yet for lunch they still produce the Comida Fuerte… long roasted succulent baby lamb and stews with beans.…as they say: ‘food that costs you to digest it’; preferably with bottles of their own wine.
01 17 21 15
The vineyards of Abel Mendoza; harvest time, a tenuous moment between the summer sun and the autumn rains when the grape sugars are as developed as they may become, when the fruit is fat and ripe within the stretched skins.
01 17 38 08
Abel joins in the harvesting. He learned from the long experience of his father, he remembers their first tractor, he knows the soil and the vines
of his land.
01 17 57 19
All the grapes are now mainly tempranillo, a result of European Union insistence on conformity. Abel said that because of this, the land and the wine have lost their richness.
01 18 08 14
The work is exhausting; from dawn to sunset they cut the bunches, carry them to the truck and ferry the truck back and forth to the presses, rushing against the impending rain, rushing against the moment when the grapes turn from ripeness to rot.
01 18 24 04
But because of the harvest it is a time of celebrations and festivals.
01 18 35 05
In Logrono, the regional capital, street theatre fills the squares, bands appear out of a twist of lanes in the old town, cafes and bars are filled with all ages deep into the night.
01 18 55 11
In the bars Riojan wine flows and thickly sliced hams and roasted vegetables fill the air with sweet tangy aromas. There is an ease and sense of community.
01 19 22 04
For many city dwellers, whose parents probably still live on the land, the poignancy of the celebrations may be understood…
01 19 31 00
…and for many it is simply an end of summer fete.
01 19 39 07
Back at Abel’s winery, another day, another cart is unloaded.
01 19 44 11
His brother-in-law, Luis Fernández Mendoza, who helps with the harvest, and Abel’s wife Maite oversee the grapes as they move up the conveyor. They sense the rain and the earth in the odours; they wonder if the sierra Catalina-a north wind which refreshes and heats the plants so they can breath-has given them a good crop.
O1 20 06 19
The children of the family along with the sisters and his parents attend the harvest.
01 20 12 04
Maite measures the sugar content of the newly arrived grape juices…this begins to tell them about the qualities of the crop.
01 20 29 02
Meanwhile the bunches are piled; their weight presses the grapes beneath; the squeezed juice is pumped to the top and used to soak through again…this is the corazon or heart of the vintage.
01 20 42 17
The first pressing is where the purest juices are released by their own weight and are day by day re-piled from bottom to top.
01 20 59 17
Now early in the morning, the Logrono revellers see the approach of the Dulcinares…this band announces what everyone has been anxiously awaiting…the running of the bulls…in celebration of the harvest.
01 21 41 20
And in Abel’s cellar last years vintage is tasted by the family:
01 21 49 07
‘Strong’ says his brother-in-law;
01 21 52 17
‘Potent’ says Maite.
01 21 56 03
And his father carefully considers;
01 22 02 17
Maite’s sister realises it’s a good quality.
01 22 05 13
This liquid embodies the family’s success and well-being. Abel said; ‘it tells how much they’ve given to get back’.
The family oversees the production of this ancient, essentially European elixir, a process as old as Mediterranean civilization itself..
01 22 56 24
And at the ring in Longrono; the young bulls are tested by the community’s bravos.
01 23 40 06
The town’s people flock to the centre where suckling lamb chops, half bottles of Rioja and music pursue ancient dreams of ‘having enough’ and freedom from hunger and other tyrannies.
01 24 04 10
Meanwhile up river, Angel, a vintner in his 8o’s shares his supermarket purchased bread and chorizo with friends. He talks of wine and vintages, oak barrels and memories of being a Riojana, a man he says who carries what he is wherever he goes and he insists people see and admire it… but for how long?
End Quote:
Ah I have lost the road
On this sad mountain
Ah I have lost the road
Let me bring the sheep
… into your cabin
in the thick clouds
I have lost the road.
A song from northern Spain
Wds: 2179 (less notes)
A people who know themselves, whose feet are firmly on the soil they call ‘the land, or our earth or home…
01 00 36 20
…these people define themselves by the vines they’ve planted, the work they do and the food they eat…
01 00 49 03
This sense of ‘self’ stands against distant corporations which reduce everyone and everyplace to the same thing.
01 01 01 06
In this episode we go to north central Spain. Running between two mountain ranges flows the river or ‘Rio’ Oja, which gives its name to the region: Rioja.
01 01 16 12
Wine is central to the economy and culture but peppers ignite the appetite of the Riojana…peppers stuffed, in stews and salads…
01 01 15 17
…or as piquant spikes on a slice of local ham.
01 01 30 08
This man spoke of his love of the red pepper and how much more flavour they have than tomatoes.
01 01 38 17
The town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada has, since the 11th century, been dedicated to the welfare of travellers passing through on pilgrimages to holy sites further west.
01 01 48 20
The massive church and the hospital for the sick, now a fine hotel, still dominate the old town.
01 02 02 08
In a small workshop off the main street a group of family friends and relatives gather to clean their burnt peppers, washing away the blackened skins; leaving the fresh sweet flesh.
01 02 28 06
These towns draw sustenance from the surrounding rich damp soil.
01 02 32 24
In this climate, influenced by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, vegetables grow especially well.
01 02 41 15
Pulses and beans are dried for the winter and provide a distinct rich flavour to cold weather foods.
01 02 48 24
Chef Juan Mora of the Hotel or Paradore Santo Domingo de la Calzada buys local produce and cooks only seasonal ingredients.
01 03 00 04
Although he’s considered a foreigner-because he’s from further south in Spain, like the locals, he insists Riojan produce is particular in taste.
01 03 32 10
Juan prepares onion, leek, and a kind of borrage sautéed in olive oil, cooked down in local white wine and blended into a cream.
01 03 40 16
He said ‘cuisine, customs and traditions aren’t changing; people come from other countries to learn from the Riojan way of life.’
01 03 49 14
Chunks of pigs cheek and sweet scallops are sautéed in olive oil.
01 03 59 20
They are served with a drizzle of a red pepper sauce, the vegetable cream and a drop of olive oil; Juan’s lighter take on a classic autumn dish.
01 04 16 20
For whatever reasons- pride, isolation, wealth, or a simple love of family- Rioja is vibrant with a regional identity tasted at their table and heard in their songs.
01 04 45 11
Bean fields -where people are free to glean the remains left by the giant harvesters.
01 05 21 16
The huge machines leave behind thousands of beans…and unemployment.
01 05 31 14
Three people can do the work of 60.
01 05 42 11
The harvesters great weight compacts the earth causing rain water to run off and with it valuable top soil.
Does technical ‘progress’ mean ‘for the good of humanity’?
01 06 07 22
But this is autumn harvest time. In the villages people gather to celebrate. As the river binds the two sides of the valley together, the festivals bind the disparate farm and shop workers together. Priests and politicians work their way through the crowd and children partake in what will become their customs.
01 06 31 24
Down the street, at the fair, a young couple produce fried dough served hot -either plain, sprinkled with sugar or coated in chocolate.
01 06 58 18
The crusty outside and melting soft inner dough lures children and adults alike.
01 07 08 24
Always on the road-travelling, heavily pregnant, the work is tough.
01 07 27 24
Sunday dawn on the rising plain south of the Ebro River which flows through Rioja.
01 07 38 08
A few people in the village of Estollo prepare for the church service in the small Plaza Generalisimo.
01 07 47 09
An older person said; ‘my generation was dominated by the civil war and the priests. In school we were only taught to pray. If you missed Sunday mass it was a terrible punishment. It’s turned older people and our children against the church’.
01 08 01 15
He said ‘the gift of liberty that we’ve given the children is a great thing. Now the church has little power.’
01 08 14 10
But a few villagers still attend.
01 08 23 04
Meanwhile Santos Saézin tends his horta, a kitchen garden which provides food, necessary to villager’s with limited incomes.
01 08 31 03
From supermarkets they purchase a few staples –the food is expensive and Santos says ‘the flavour isn’t so good’.
01 08 40 15
He grows cabbages, onions, carrots, many fruits and of course peppers…
01 08 53 22
…but the figs…plump with oozing honeyed flesh..
01 09 02 09
Lordes, the daughter of Santos and Catalina prepares breaded pork sautéed in olive oil and peppers fried with garlic.
01 09 10 24
Catulina said: ‘until 1960 we had one light bulb on a long cable, it illuminated our whole house.’ Now we’ve got running water and a freezer…life’s easier but we’re losing our traditions’.
01 09 25 05
As Lordes serves a first course of macaroni with chorizo and pancetta, a salted bacon, she said her children are influenced by T.V. culture.
01 09 33 20
Nuria, her teenage daughter offered: ‘I want to buy things, travel and have a nice car…that’s wealth and riches’.
01 09 40 10
Santos said: ‘we used to make bread….but European Union grants meant the price was controlled- no profits for small bakers…another reason why young people move away.’
01 10 07 07
For Catalina her Rioja means freedom.
01 10 11 01
Santos said he could not imagine being without Rioja.
10 10 39 21
Peppers and more peppers… Javier Lafuente Zuñeda grows his own as ‘a natural product’.
01 10 47 17
He said ‘Chemically grown peppers may have taste but lack a human quality’.
‘I’m looking for an equilibrium between producer, consumer and the earth. I don’t use aggressive chemicals which burn the soil.’
01 11 01 06
After washing the peppers, beech wood ….which makes a clean hot flame with no resin, is used to fuel the tumbling furnace which burns the skins.
01 11 13 18
As the women peel the charred skins and pack the peppers, Javier explained: ‘To make this product you need an infrastructure which gives the opportunity for the young people to stay. The women come and go according to a schedule created by their children or chores.
01 11 36 00
Javier knows his limits of production are clearly defined. To go beyond he would lose the organic and artisanal nature; this would contradict his philosophy.
01 12 10 05
Juan Nales, one of the fine chefs of the region has a commercial baker provide him breads to Juan’s own recipe.
01 12 18 19
‘What we could source’, he said, ‘was too plain, too anonymous’.
01 12 27 05
His restaurant Las Duelas means ‘barrel staves’- which are cut by hand and fitted precisely….the same with Juan’s food.
01 12 37 15
His menu responds to the seasons as produce becomes available.
01 12 45 04
He sautés wild mushrooms in last years olive oil and end of summer tomatoes mixed into a Spanish rice.
01 12 55 22
These early autumn flavours will support a singed and roasted wild pigeon breast.
01 13 01 12
For Juan, cooking is using simple techniques to intensify taste.
01 13 08 08
His menu includes Riojana dishes because the freshest ingredients are the local ones best suited to those recipes.
01 13 15 02
He believes the heart of Riojan cooking is still in the small towns and villages.
01 13 20 00
Modern cooking is more healthy and lighter: he cooks vegetables separately and al dente to preserve their flavour.
01 13 28 02
Unlike local traditions he uses little bacon fat. His sauces are made from reduced and thickened stocks without flour .
01 13 37 17
Different chefs, different preoccupations: luxurious, essential, passionate or harmonious tastes, counterpoints, organics, naturalness.
01 13 56 19
Intense truthful flavours, dazzling colour as in this dish of rare venison…..these are Juan’s artful tools.
01 14 13 01
JUAN speaks: All my life I have worked for this…
01 14 15 00
JUAN:’I have studied for this…’
01 14 17 12
JUAN: ‘This is my life…
01 14 19 00
JUAN: ‘My passion.’
01 14 28 09
Every year in Haro, on the towns saint’s day, there is a mock war: people squirt wine at each other. Marta, one of the rare female patisserie chefs said “the statue of the saint sits on stones, so I’ve made symbolic ‘stones’ of hazelnuts, Rioja wine and chocolate’.
01 15 20 17
Martas’ devotion to her daughter and her clients is as clear as the cases in her shop where her confections are like a celebration.
01 15 37 18
These lambs, reared by Jesus and Justina de Treviana only feed on milk and are slaughtered at 25 days old.
They are sent to a renown traditional rustic restaurant, Terete in Haro which has been roasting lambs and suckling pigs since 1877.
01 16 08 07
Every morning Alberto, the eldest son, prepares the lambs for the wood oven.
01 16 14 03
The restaurant has always been in his family. Alberto said; ‘it’s difficult to keep up the traditions with so many European Union regulations-people can’t be bothered to provide the natural fields for the sheep or maintain the standard of supplies..’; life’s changing’.
01 16 30 14
The meat is cooked without seasoning or flavouring.
01 16 38 01
His father said: For me it’s not about the European Union but about people seeking profit and nothing else..
01 16 47 00
Yet for lunch they still produce the Comida Fuerte… long roasted succulent baby lamb and stews with beans.…as they say: ‘food that costs you to digest it’; preferably with bottles of their own wine.
01 17 21 15
The vineyards of Abel Mendoza; harvest time, a tenuous moment between the summer sun and the autumn rains when the grape sugars are as developed as they may become, when the fruit is fat and ripe within the stretched skins.
01 17 38 08
Abel joins in the harvesting. He learned from the long experience of his father, he remembers their first tractor, he knows the soil and the vines
of his land.
01 17 57 19
All the grapes are now mainly tempranillo, a result of European Union insistence on conformity. Abel said that because of this, the land and the wine have lost their richness.
01 18 08 14
The work is exhausting; from dawn to sunset they cut the bunches, carry them to the truck and ferry the truck back and forth to the presses, rushing against the impending rain, rushing against the moment when the grapes turn from ripeness to rot.
01 18 24 04
But because of the harvest it is a time of celebrations and festivals.
01 18 35 05
In Logrono, the regional capital, street theatre fills the squares, bands appear out of a twist of lanes in the old town, cafes and bars are filled with all ages deep into the night.
01 18 55 11
In the bars Riojan wine flows and thickly sliced hams and roasted vegetables fill the air with sweet tangy aromas. There is an ease and sense of community.
01 19 22 04
For many city dwellers, whose parents probably still live on the land, the poignancy of the celebrations may be understood…
01 19 31 00
…and for many it is simply an end of summer fete.
01 19 39 07
Back at Abel’s winery, another day, another cart is unloaded.
01 19 44 11
His brother-in-law, Luis Fernández Mendoza, who helps with the harvest, and Abel’s wife Maite oversee the grapes as they move up the conveyor. They sense the rain and the earth in the odours; they wonder if the sierra Catalina-a north wind which refreshes and heats the plants so they can breath-has given them a good crop.
O1 20 06 19
The children of the family along with the sisters and his parents attend the harvest.
01 20 12 04
Maite measures the sugar content of the newly arrived grape juices…this begins to tell them about the qualities of the crop.
01 20 29 02
Meanwhile the bunches are piled; their weight presses the grapes beneath; the squeezed juice is pumped to the top and used to soak through again…this is the corazon or heart of the vintage.
01 20 42 17
The first pressing is where the purest juices are released by their own weight and are day by day re-piled from bottom to top.
01 20 59 17
Now early in the morning, the Logrono revellers see the approach of the Dulcinares…this band announces what everyone has been anxiously awaiting…the running of the bulls…in celebration of the harvest.
01 21 41 20
And in Abel’s cellar last years vintage is tasted by the family:
01 21 49 07
‘Strong’ says his brother-in-law;
01 21 52 17
‘Potent’ says Maite.
01 21 56 03
And his father carefully considers;
01 22 02 17
Maite’s sister realises it’s a good quality.
01 22 05 13
This liquid embodies the family’s success and well-being. Abel said; ‘it tells how much they’ve given to get back’.
The family oversees the production of this ancient, essentially European elixir, a process as old as Mediterranean civilization itself..
01 22 56 24
And at the ring in Longrono; the young bulls are tested by the community’s bravos.
01 23 40 06
The town’s people flock to the centre where suckling lamb chops, half bottles of Rioja and music pursue ancient dreams of ‘having enough’ and freedom from hunger and other tyrannies.
01 24 04 10
Meanwhile up river, Angel, a vintner in his 8o’s shares his supermarket purchased bread and chorizo with friends. He talks of wine and vintages, oak barrels and memories of being a Riojana, a man he says who carries what he is wherever he goes and he insists people see and admire it… but for how long?
End Quote:
Ah I have lost the road
On this sad mountain
Ah I have lost the road
Let me bring the sheep
… into your cabin
in the thick clouds
I have lost the road.
A song from northern Spain
Wds: 2179 (less notes)