Wined, dined and rested.

When arriving in Spain from France on the Mediterranean side there is an obvious route, the “Mediterránea” motorway that takes you down the whole coast. However once you’ve passed Valencia the road is indescribably boring, just miles and miles of industrial fruit and vegetable processing plants and straight, flat roads. Once done, never voluntarily repeated.
So every year we leave the Mediterránea around Valencia and strike off across country. This strategy has given us some of our most interesting Spanish hotel experiences – I’ve already written about Benasal in the beautiful Maestrazgo area.  In contrast, I avoided writing about Tomelloso because I couldn’t find a single positive thing to say about it…

This time I had found a small hotel in a little town called Motilla del Palancar, not far from Cuenca. It was called Hotel Setos; as I reasoned with Julia when she looked at the town’s apparently endless industrial units on Google Street View, we just needed somewhere to sleep before carrying on.

Well, what a good choice this turned out to be! Yes, it is on a main road with lorries trundling by regularly, but everything else was a series of pleasant surprises that kept us smiling delightedly.

It had been built in 1940 and restored much more recently. When one of the local men saw me taking photos, he came over and gave me a postcard of the hotel in the 1960s and told me how he remembered that every time General Franco came through, all the local children were given little Spanish flags and had to stand on the road opposite the hotel waving these flags as the Presidential car swept by.

We were met by a distinguished gentleman who had recently retired from his job as food and beverage manager of a 5 star hotel in Madrid and was learning the ropes around the hotel prior to taking over for a few weeks while his friend the owner visited Cuba. He showed us to a room with wood panelling and antiques – first surprise, in a roadside inn!

As ever in Spain, everything was absolutely clean, the bathroom looked newly done, and the wifi was excellent.
We had had a long journey and went downstairs for a cold beer; we met some gentle resistance to the idea of sitting outside (“Wouldn’t you rather sit in the air conditioning?”) but then it was remembered that we are English and it was as if a lightbulb was illuminated – “Ah, you are English!”. It was about 30 degrees at 7pm, but the shade kept us from overheating and before long we were having a conversation with the charming distinguished man.

On discovering that we were interested in food and wine he almost leapt with delight and, telling us that his passion was cheese and in particular Manchego cheese, he rushed off and came back with a plate of triangles of some 10-month aged and some 14-month aged Manchego then stood there grinning in anticipation while we tasted them. They were astonishing, like no other Manchego either of us had ever tasted – I usually avoid Manchego because I don’t think it has much flavour, but this was special. The texture was toothsome, the creaminess combined with strength of flavour was remarkable. Wow.

He went on to say that the owner of the hotel was a keen wine buff, and brought him over to meet us. He too was passionate, mostly about local wines – what a real pleasure to talk to these two knowledgeable and friendly experts.
The owner, Javier, suggested that we should have a tasting experience for our supper. He would produce three or four dishes to share, of local food, and three bottles of local wine that he would open for us, charging us only for each glass, so we could taste it.
Curiouser and curiouser, to coin a phrase. And what an amazing time we had, each course and each wine introduced by Javier with passion and understanding.
We were taken inside to the restaurant, then started with some really good jamón pata negra accompanied by a 100% Tempranillo wine from Vega Moragona, a lovely smooth red with tannins coming in lightly the end.

He then brought us a plate of partridge salad and some toasted bread with tomato; the photos don’t really do the food justice, but the partridge was local and mixed with the slightly bitter radicchio salad the dish was full of contrasts of both taste and texture.

With that we had some 100% Syrah from Casa Carril Cruzado, a family vineyard. It had had 12 months in oak barrels, although the oak was not at all obtrusive; it was quite long, smooth and with no harsh end.

We kept this wine for our next dish, which was tiny cutlets of goat cooked in garlic. What particularly struck us, apart from the tenderness of the meat, was the ‘gentleness’ of the garlic. There was lots of it on the plate but it didn’t overpower the dish at all; Javier explained that this was because it was cut vertically. When you cut a garlic clove horizontally the inner layer releases acid, which gives it the ‘kick’.

Finally we were given a glass of 100% Petit Verdot, also from Casa Carril Cruzado. It’s unusual to find Petit Verdot on its own, and we were not as impressed by this wine as by the others; it was a little thin and harder to find the flavour, possibly because it was served chilled.
But our last plate of food was excellent. It was small slices of roe deer in an extremely good Tempranillo reduction that was so dark and thick we even wondered if it was chocolate when it arrived. I think our French-trained palates would have preferred the meat cooked a little more rare, but it was still the stand-out dish.

Afterwards we took a glass of iced water outside to enjoy the cool of the evening (and watch the lorries glide past, mysteriously quieter at night) and discovered at 11.30pm most of the terrace tables full of people enjoying a less formal eating experience, a happy buzz of chatter as some of the town’s 5,000 population took advantage of this wonderful roadside inn to round off their day after the overpowering heat of a Cuenca summer.

What a joy it is to find places like this; if you are ever crossing Spain in a car, I recommend you take a detour specifically to visit this little jewel with its delightful personnel. Mention my blog and perhaps you will be lucky enough to be given the tasting experience! Oh and don’t forget to ask Javier to sell you some of the wine – it’s quite hard to find truly local wine in Spain, and if you don’t have the time to trawl all the local shops the option of buying from him (at a very reasonable price, I must say) is an excellent way to make the Cuenca countryside experience last just a little longer.