I took a week off blogging for a vacation in Marbella, located in Malaga Province in southern Spain.  It’s always a great break to go to the coast, one of the few places I can really relax.  I always feel like it’s a spa week as I go to the gym, walk a lot and eat really healthy.  We eat nothing but fish and seafood when we’re down there, either grilled or fried…so fresh and delicious.  The food in southern Spain tends to be simpler than elsewhere and can be repetitive, but it is really perfect for a few days.  We ate simple food at simple place….the one exception being Calima Restaurant, which I will write up separately. Food highlights typical down there are coquinas, tiny clam-like shellfish, chopitos, baby fried squid, grilled large shrimp, and grilled sardines.  There are also wonderful salads, especially a typical roasted pepper salad and a tomato-garlic salad.  Our favorite restaurant for fish and shellfish in Marbella is El Timonel….great value and delicious food….their grilled calamar with a garlic olive oil is one of my favorites.  The wine scene in southern Spain is pretty dismal. Read on for more on the terrible wine choices available and my review of the most popular white wine in Spain:  Barbadillo.

Another group of unique and hedonistic holiday wines are dessert wines…they are a perfect ending to a long meal and often can match well with certain holiday dishes, such as foie or cheese.  Dessert wines are under-appreciated and often misunderstood…even by wine lovers.  The dessert wines I serve to my classes often cause surprise…many clients have never tried high quality sweet wines and they are often astonished by what they taste. There are so many types…but today I would like to recommend three:

My husband’s family loves a good dessert wine…so we break one out as often as possible. Often they are not Spanish ones, as the Spanish dessert wine scene can be limiting, but today we had one of our favourite sweet sherries. Pedro Ximenez (PX) is the typical sweet sherry that you see over here. PX is the sweetening grape made after drying the grapes in the sun. The monovarietal wine is thick, syrupy and intensely sweet, especially after long aging. It can be quirt nice but many of them are very cloying. One sip suffices…or it can be used over vanilla ice cream.