On Course for Valencia, but where’s the wine?

After a fascinating glimpse of the basement of the tennis world – watching Navarro beat Valencia-based Brit Morgan Phillips 6-1 6-1 in the qualifying round of the Valencia Open before a sparse crowd more interested in the Agora venue than the tennis – we wandered the various stands outside the venue.

As ever, there was plenty of publicly-funded activity and reading material. I always cast an interested eye over this stuff to see what is being said.

On picking up On course for Valencia, a 112-page booklet from the Conselleria de Turisme that has a lot of interesting historical and architectural info, I flicked to “Gastronomy” on pages 70-71 OK, this is not an exhaustive survey, but there are 13 lines on Fideuá, 12 on All i Pebre, 7 on Arnadá, 7 on Mona de Pascua, 9 on Bunyols, a grand total of 25 devoted to horchata, before we come to the final heading “Wines”.

There are then just 4 sad and grammatically-confused lines that read “Visitors must sample the Valencia denominaci√≥n de origen wines, such as the Alto Turia and Utiel-Requena whites, and in particular the reds, ros√©s and cavas.” This is followed by a large blank area long enough for a further 22 lines.

It seems perverse to put such a downbeat, not to say off-putting, reference in at all.

Meanwhile, I have received an invitation from the “Ruta del Vino de la DO Utiel-Requena” to attend a function tomorrow morning at the Conselleria de Agricultura as part of the “D√≠a Europeo de Enoturismo” (European Wine Tourism Day). I don’t know whether the Conselleria de Turisme and the Conselleria de Agricultura talk to each other, but it seems to me there ought to be some more dynamic collaboration.

I think I’ll go, and I’ll take the booklet with me.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 21:18 and is filed under General.