The monastery of Poblet sits on a ridge above the village of L’Espluga de Francol, Catalonia, in the hills of the Conca de Barbera.

As I arrive, its fantastical towers and fruit groves are shrouded in soupy morning mist. Opposite the main gate, a grim stone cross is flanked by seven squat firs and the crows huddle together on telegraph wires against the chill north wind.

From the 12th century the Cistercian monastery was the final resting place of the kings and queens of Catalonia and Aragon. It was built on the site of a miracle. A holy hermit named Poblet was captured and imprisoned by the Moors, but angels appeared three times in the night and broke his chains.

His captors, impressed, granted him freedom. After the re-conquest of the area in 1149, Ramon Berenguer IV ordered that a monastery be built on the sacred ground. That, anyway, was how Richard Ford told the story in his 1845 Handbook for Travellers in Spain. [Read more →]

For me, Brittany will always be the place where, aged nine and a half, I had my first taste of foreign food. Just hearing the name conjures up a crowded campsite, queues for the showers, the staccato drone of rain battering canvas and my dad reversing our new Citroen into a bollard at Portsmouth harbour.

But for the French, Brittany is renowned for salt – specifically, for Breton fleur du sel. It is somehow appropriate that a place where authentic local dishes (and pizzas) come with crab and cockles, or lobster and langoustines, should have made its name from the sea. [Read more →]

Cava. The fizz that does the biz without breaking the bank. You might crack open a bottle on a friend’s – but not a really good friend’s – birthday. Or at Christmas – especially at Christmas. Seven bottles of Cava equals one of Champagne. You do the maths. But to a Catalan, Cava means something altogether different. Catalans treat it with the sort of reverence Brazilians reserve for Candomble or the French for the Tour de France.

Were it not for just one building, Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, the home of Cava, might be just about the wine world’s most forgettable town. Driving through the Penedes in February, I’m too late for autumn’s ochres, too early for the first emerald shoots of spring. Slate-grey town blends colourlessly into muted green countryside, the only punctuation those regimented rows of gnarled vines.

Cava was first made here in 1872. Josep Raventos, back from working in France’s Champagne region, brought the techniques home to the family business. Within a decade, his xampany was a sensation – and Codorniu has become the world’s biggest producer of sparkling wine. [Read more →]