Month: October 2025

Plaza Mayor

Among the things that any first-time to Madrid must do is to visit the Plaza Mayor.  That’s sort of like saying that first-time visitors to New York City must see Times Square.  There’s no way any visitor would miss it.  It is the principal meeting place in Spain’s capital city and it has had an interesting history.

The Plaza Mayor in Madrid, at night.

There has been a marketplace in that spot since the 15th century.  It wasn’t always called the Plaza Mayor (Major Square in English).  The name has changed in the winds of Spanish politics; for instance it was called Plaza de la Constitución off and on depending on the strength of the monarchy.  It has stayed as the Plaza Mayor only since the end of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, but it seems the name will stick.

Today it is a grand square completely surrounded by four-story buildings.  Mostly they are occupied as private residences, except for the plaza-level, which is almost completely commercial.  The plaza is a magnet for tourists and so it is filled with people every day, all year long.  Where there are tourists, there are sure to be vendors spreading a blanket and selling handbags, tchotchkes and Real Madrid tee shirts.  There are also acrobats and street musicians, about the same as may be found in almost every popular tourist destination, worldwide.

That said, the Plaza Mayor is a marvel of architectural harmony, designed as we know it today by Juan Villanueva, who also was the architect of the Parado museum and other grand buildings in Madrid.  In the middle of it all is a statue of the Spanish king Philip III on horseback.   It is quite a pleasure to sit under one of the restaurant umbrellas surrounding the plaza, sipping a glass of wine and munching on tapas.  Just taking in the hubbub is a part of the Madrid experience.

It is also worth exploring the shops that surround the Plaza Mayor.  There is an arched portico around the square and the shops are easy to access, even if the day is hot or rainy.  Many of them are full of tacky souvenirs, but there are some interesting ones, such as the hatmaker and vendor of Spanish almonds.

The Mercado San Miguel.  Photo courtesy of Tourism Madrid.

Just outside the northwest corner of the Plaza Mayor is the Mercado San Miguel.  It should be experienced on an empty stomach.  It was an actual food market for nearly a century, until the growth of supermarkets rendered it obsolete.  In 2009 it was re-opened as a mammoth gourmet tapas food hall.  The game plan for a visit there is to walk around and locate the food to buy.  This is difficult because everything looks (and is) delicious. One person hunts down some empty stools at the long tables that are located throughout the hall.  Another person finds the bar and purchases glasses of wine.  Then they take turns buying portions to share from the various kiosks.  When sated – this can take hours – they repair to the bar and finish off the meal with their grand selection of sherries.

Freixenet, Today

This article is meant to be the companion piece to “Freixenet, Back When”, published in the Experiences section of Power Tasting’s April 2025 edition.  As published, we had consistently misspelled the name of the winery, which we have since corrected.  And while we’re at it, the name of the winery is pronounced FRESH-eh-net. We apologize to our readers and to the people at Freixenet.

There are often wine tasting destinations near big cities.  Napa Valley is an hour or so from San Francisco.  It’s a few hours’ drive from New York City to Long Island’s North Fork.  Wine is being made inside Vienna’s city limits and nearby as well.  And just outside Barcelona, there’s Penedes, where Cava is made.  An easy train ride from Barcelona to the village of Sant Sadurní d’Anoia brings you directly to Freixenet.

The Freixenet winery.

In case you weren’t aware, Cava is Spain’s sparkling wine.  At Freixenet, it is made the same way as French Champagne, except that the primary grapes are Macabeo, Paralleda and Xarelo (or Xarel·lo, as the Catalans spell it).  Their wines range from the well-known Carta Nevada and Cordon Negro to some interesting wines at the other end of their spectrum, such as Gran Reserva Brut Nature (with no dosage) and an Extra Brut.  They also have a rosé sparkler that is made of the Trepat grape.  Finally, there is a dessert sparkling one made from Malvasia grapes. 

Reproduction of a Freixenet advertising poster of another era.

All these are the wines served on their wine and cheese tour, which we recommend.  If you do take the train there, you will find the winery right at the station.  Externally, it looks very much like a Spanish hacienda, which we guess isn’t unintentional.  The area in front of the winery has some ancient presses and a golden 1950 Chrysler.  Once inside, the reception area is sleek and modern, decorated with art that recalls Freixenet’s history.  There’s also the Freixenetmobile, in the form of a bottle of Cordon Negro.

The Freixenetmobile.

The tour begins with a film about Freixenet’s history and current presence in the world.  Not only are they the best selling Cava, the company sells more sparkling wine than any other producer globally.  They have a long history, having been founded in 1914.  They survived the Spanish Civil War that took the lives of the founder and his son.  His widow kept Freixenet going through the Franco years.  In 2018, they were bought out by the German Sekt maker, Henkell, so now they are not just Spanish but international

If you’ve seen how Champagne or California sparkling wine is made, there’s not much new on the tour of Freixenet.  One fun extra is an array of antique bottling equipment.  The high spot, naturally, is the tasting.  There, Freixenet flexes its muscles a bit and shows of what Cava is capable of.  As always, Power Tasting doesn’t review wine, but we can say that we did enjoy what we were served and were quite delightedly surprised by Freixenet’s range. 

Sadly, their better Cavas aren’t available in the United States and only sparingly so in Canada.  So there’s nothing else to do than travel to Spain and take the Freixenet tour.

All Those Grapes

As detailed in another article in this edition, Spanish winemakers use a lot of grapes that are unfamiliar to most North American wine lovers.  Perhaps most people don’t care but the readers of Power Tasting are a demanding bunch.  They don’t just want to enjoy what they’re sipping but also know about it.  In California, wherever they go, they know they’ll find Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Zinfandel in the reds, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc in the whites.

Tasting wine at tapas bars in Barcelona.

Not so in Spain.  A lot of it is geographical.  In the north, there will be Tempranillo; in the southwest, near Jerez, there will be Palomino and Pedro Ximénez in the sherry.  Macabeo in Pinedes, Mencia in the Priorat and in Galicia Albariño grapes go into the wine of the same name.  It would take a lot of travel to experience them all at the vineyards.

That’s where wine bars come in.  The fact that the bars also double as taparias doesn’t hurt.  Here are a few tips for diving into the various grapes that are used in Spanish winemaking.

  • One option is pot luck.  There’s nothing stopping you from sitting down with a tapa and asking for a glass of tinto or a blanco.  Then ask the server what wine was served.  Crude but effective, if you go to enough tapas bars you’re likely to get a selection.  But it will also likely be a selection of mediocre wines.
  • Skip the sangria.  A pitcher of fruit juice, red wine and fruit is (may be?) fine for a picnic.  If you’re interested in learning about Spanish wines, you won’t learn anything with sangria.
  • A better plan is to go to the slightly better tapas bars (for the most part, you can tell the better ones just by looking at them) and order wine by region.  Even better, order several glasses from different regions and compare them.  In that manner we found that we prefer wines from the Ribero del Duero to those from Rioja.  Maybe that’s because Riberos are often blended with Cabernet Sauvignon and Riojas with Spanish grapes.  In the whites, we found we prefer Albariños to the Macabeos of Rioja.
  • Rely on sommeliers.  While this is good advice anywhere, having someone guide you through the mysteries of a Spanish wine list is very helpful.  A better restaurant will offer wines from smaller producers of higher quality that are probably unknown to foreign visitors.  Always with consideration for the food order, you can ask a sommelier or a server to suggest a wine specifically from regions other than the best known ones and from less well known grapes as well.  That’s how, in the past, we discovered Priorat wines and Verdejo from Castille.
  • Try as many as you can, then decide.  It is easy to fall back on Tempranillo as a favorite because these are the most widely available wines back home.  But if you’re in Spain, experiment.  You may never get to taste wines from some grapes again.  And if you find one you do like, you can search for it in wine stores around where you live.  You may get lucky.

Discovering Spanish Wines

Our earliest wine drinking experiences were with (inexpensive) French wines.  We don’t remember for sure whether our parents knew about these first sips.  By the time we got to California wines, they were in big jugs, mostly opened at parties.  We have moved up a bit from those days, but still our table usually features wines from France, Italy and the United States. 

Photo courtesy of 8Wines.

We came to Spanish wines much later in life.  In one way, that was too bad, since we missed out on some fine drinking.  On the other hand, we were able to appreciate quality when we tasted it.  Even so, most of our experience was in Spanish restaurants, where the wine lists were not too deep.  Mostly, we ordered Montecillo and Torres Sangre de Toro; nothing wrong with them but not a real introduction to what the Spaniards are capable of.

Little by little, the restaurants we frequented featured more robust wine lists.  By then, we knew that the better wines (or more accurately, the better wines we had heard of) came from Rioja and were made of Tempranillo grapes.  (We didn’t drink much Spanish white wine.)  And indeed Rioja makes some fine wines, but then we discovered that off to the west, there were excellent wines being made in the Ribiero de Duero.  And there were other grapes, such as Garnacha and Monastrell.  (Only much later did we learn that those grapes were the same as – and maybe the predecessors of – what the French know as Grenache and Mourvèdre.)

Little by little, we started drinking wines from Zaragoza (made of Cariñena, the same as Carignan), Catalunya and the Priorat (made of Mencia grapes, the same as nothing else).  For the most part, these were still consumed in restaurants, though there were a few we found in local wine stores.  We still stayed with inexpensive Spanish wines, since we didn’t know much about what to buy.  And some of those less pricey wines, such as Borsao’s Tres Picos from Aragon were pretty good.

Then we began to travel in Spain and our wine tasting adventures went in both directions.  At tapas bars, we would order a tinto (occasionally a blanco) and got a glass of whatever and a little bit to eat.  We certainly didn’t expand our understanding of quality Spanish wines. 

But we did eat in better Spanish restaurants and, ignorant as we were of their wines, let the sommeliers help us.  Now our eyes were opened, along with our noses and mouths.  For one thing, we found out that mass producers such as Torres and Marques de Riscal made some top end wines we couldn’t find back home.  For another, we discovered wine makers such as Muga, Pesquera and Vega Sicilia that made excellent wines that we could find in North American stores.

We still drink more wines from other regions than we do from Spain, but we have a greater appreciation of the quality of Spanish wines.  We are also impressed by the variety of wines made there.  We enjoy the wines we have with paella at local Spanish restaurants and we have much better knowledge of what’s in the bottles.