The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese (17 page)

*
Ambrosio’s wine was made of Duero grapes harvested in September, fermented for only four months, and was ready to drink by Christmas. His was a young wine, light, almost effervescent. He had no doubt that it was the best made in Guzmán—confidence being his strong suit—but even within his family, his brother Roberto made a heavier, fuller wine that also laid claim to high praise, so the debate never ended. (Roberto’s wife, Mika, who never lacked for honesty, summed up Ambrosio’s with one word: “Shit.”) In fact it was the way of the village to while away the hours criticizing and celebrating one another’s handmade wines, much as the common American male might deconstruct with great nuance his favorite, or most hated, sports teams.

†
… sixty-six! And when that grandchild could drive: eighty-two! And when that grandchild graduated college: ninety! And this telescoping of time sparked its own pang of depression and a primal call from deep within: Stop eating potato chips … 
now
!

‡
A translator’s note here: In all that was to follow, Carlos would handle about 70 percent of the translation; Jeff about 5 percent; and, at the end, my friends in Barcelona, Gerry and Anne, the last 25 percent. On other occasions, those in the village who could speak English—Ambrosio’s daughter, Asunita; his brother Angel; Mika—would translate. And sometimes my wife, Sara, did. On rare occasions I muddled through on my own, taping so I could get a proper translation later. While I came to understand more and more of the language, and eventually could grasp the substance of a conversation if not the specifics, my own verbal aptitude was best summed up by Ambrosio’s pal the stonemason Cristian, after I asked him a question in Spanish. “How many years have you been coming here?” he said. “And you
still
speak like shit!”

§
In a helpful visual, I was later told by University of Burgos prehistory professor Marta Navazo Ruiz to imagine the Meseta and its surrounding mountain range—the Cantabrian—as an amphitheater, with the mountains as a hemicycle of seats and the Meseta itself as the stage. But the Meseta’s stage had its own striations. Like a cake, said Ruiz. When the European and African tectonic plates had collided millions of years ago, the Meseta, which was perhaps something of a swampland (a wok of trapped water, thought I), had lifted a bit at one end (like a tilt maze, thought I), and the watershed began to drain west in the torrential downpours that characterized that time when the glaciers receded (though glaciers didn’t reach as far south as Castile), collecting in the sluggish Duero River and flowing toward Portugal. The water moving across the Meseta had caused various degrees of erosion, sculpting the multilayered plains of Castile: the river gorges, the
coterro
(or what I took to be the middle ground), and the
páramo
at the highest elevation. The flowing water also left high points of sedimentation, called “witness hills.” It was on top of one of these witness hills that Guzmán found itself perched.

‖
Churra is a uniquely hearty Iberian breed of sheep with a shaggy topcoat and soft undercoat (occasionally giving the impression of a spindly-ankled Upper East Side socialite in bulky fur coat and high heels), one that, because of its durability and resistance to disease, became the first breed of sheep introduced in the New World, co-opted by force and trade by tribes like the Navajo for its lean, flavorful meat and fine, lustrous fleece. But it was the milk of the sheep that interested Ambrosio most, being the lead ingredient in Zamorano cheese, a cheese from the Zamora region, ninety miles west of Guzmán, that was nuttier and more piquant than Manchego, aged for six months and cured with olive oil, which darkened its color, a process similar to that of his own Páramo de Guzmán.

a
It averaged out to about 3.2876 bottles a day, shared primarily by Ambrosio, Angel, and their father, and yet this was deceptive because they seemed to drink so much more, at the bar or visiting with compadres, from bottles that were given to them, for the exchange of homemade wine was a custom among friends. It seemed the 1,200 bottles were truly meant as a foundation. Some years, as Ambrosio said, “my father drinks so much, we have to go out and buy much more. He drinks so much he has a groove in his front tooth where the stream from the
porrón
has worn it down.”

b
The entire brood was alarmingly good-looking: Daughter Asunita, the oldest, twenty-two when I first met her, possessed a husky voice, a flashing smile, and a well of creativity. Newly returned to Madrid after a London sojourn during which she’d worked for a cheese and wine importer, she was an artist; her work graced the house, including some of her earliest paintings, which were of the cheese. Next came Josué, three years her junior, standing ramrod straight with hair that flowed to his shoulder blades, who’d just finished a degree at agricultural school and had begun to share more and more duties in the family fields. And finally came Kiké, the baby and an enigma at sixteen, playing in a punk rock band. He wore a green Mohawk and ripped clothes, but if this bothered his parents, they never showed it; instead they loved to tell a story about when he was young, how he had literally climbed the walls. You might walk into a room, they said, and Kiké would be suctioned up in the corner, looking down with a smile on his face.

c
A leading brand of bread, on the other hand, was known as Bimbo—and when I tried to describe what
that
meant, it was taken to mean I was discussing my wife.

d
Like, for instance, was there a gremlin artist loose in Castile, one who built cool little rock towers in all the fields? No, there was not. These were
majones
, stone towers built by farmers to mark the boundaries of their fields, a custom perhaps dating back to the Romans. And these had a way of shifting over time, one farmer trying to claim more land, which often resulted in disputes, bad blood,
porrones
dumped over heads, and worse. “It is advisable,” said Ambrosio, “to
never ever
touch one of those.”

And what of the piles of sticks one saw at the edges of the fields in winter? These were the remnants of pruned grapevines called
sermentos
. Said Ambrosio: “There’s a saying in Castile that goes, ‘Don’t fall in love with a woman from a town that doesn’t have
sermentos,’
which means there aren’t any vineyards, which means there isn’t any wine, which means the people aren’t very happy.”

e
On his blog, Gerry Dawes, the American connoisseur of all things Spanish, leaves the following record on the occasion of Ambrosio relating a recipe for a dish known as
olla podrida
, or rotten pot stew. Says Ambrosio into Gerry’s tape recorder: “First, an
olla podrida
should be made with
alubias de Ibeas
, the little black-red beans that come from around the village of Ibeas east of Burgos and are the best beans in Spain. That is most important. Then, in a clay stovetop casserole, you slowly cook the beans with a special
adobado
(marinated) pig foot, a marinated pig’s ear, and pork ribs. The
adobo
marinade is made with salted water, to which oregano is added or, depending on the area, other spices such as black pepper, bay leaves, and paprika, sometimes even piquant paprika. The marinade, which gives the
olla podrida
its strong flavor, also preserves the meat, so it can be left all season in a cool place such as a basement or a cave. Then you put in some fatty chorizo, the one they call
botageo
, because it has a higher percentage of fat to lean, and some
morcilla
, blood sausage.

“But, there is more. Ambrosio continues, ‘Once the
olla podrida
is cooked, you make what we call
bolas
, made from toasted hard bread that is then mixed [with] some of the pork fat from the stew to make “balls,” which are then fried and served on a platter alongside the
olla
. The meat that was cooked with the beans is served on a separate platter, the beans are also served on a separate dish, and
guindillas
, pickled onions, and other pickled vegetables are served as a garnish. Then all you need is a big appetite.’ ” Afterward, according to Gerry, “Ambrosio recommended a scandalous precaution, not to be repeated here, for the flatulence he said was sure to ensue.”

f
One last word about Luis’s keys: After the royal decree calling for the expulsion of the Jews, which took effect in 1492, some 200,000 people left Spain, settling around the Mediterranean from Morocco to Turkey, some carrying keys from their old homes, demolished in their wake, that were then passed from generation to generation as heirlooms or keepsakes, symbolic reminders of a lost life. It’s unclear whether Luis knew this (in fact, I believe he didn’t), but then it explained a silent murmur from the past that perhaps he’d heard, or that guided him invisibly, the fetishizing of those old keys into being, into gifts, into a physical expression of memory, not unlike Ambrosio’s cheese.

g
Truth was, a quick fact-check often proved Ambrosio right. From the website Chowhound, one foodie who traveled far and wide questing for the finest of this slow-roasted, succulent lamb, called
lechazo
, ended up at Cristóbal’s restaurant, El Nazareno, celebrating it as “Castilla y León’s ‘lamb palace’ ” and a “lamb temple.”

h
For it was here that his sensitivity and artistry shone through. His catalogue had been rehearsed all those years when his mother was alive, and the townspeople clamored for a
gisa
, an oxtail stew he made, and in particular a snail sauce that Ambrosio said was “technically probably the best sauce in the world, but is more, because it contains all the love of his mother.”

i
According to Richard Ford’s
Gatherings from Spain
, Isabella, “a pallid, podgy, pampered, and petulant princess” who, when queen, married an impotent man and bore nine children with an assortment of paramours, caused final offense in middle age (“her figure not improved by her penchant for sweets and cakes”) by taking up with the civil governor of Madrid, Carlos Marfori, who was, yes, the son of an Italian pastry chef.

j
Much has been made of the tribes of Spain—the Basques and their industriousness, the Catalans and their cosmopolitan view of the world, the Castilians and their regal bearing—and the Spanish make much of their own, too: the Basques as contrarian mules, the Catalans as surly grouches obsessed with money, the Castilians as prideful rustics. Unlike an American, it’s true, a Castilian won’t necessarily greet a stranger with claps on the back and false steakhouse theatricality, but here’s an observation that a Swede I know in Madrid once shared with me: We were seated at La Toja one midday for our
comida
, eating a beautiful piece of buttered fish and sipping some very nice wine, and the waitstaff was treating him particularly well. I asked him how exactly he’d become such an insider here, and he said, “The first time you visit a restaurant in Madrid, you come like everyone else—and get treated like everyone else. The second time, the waitstaff may give you a nod, some extra bread, a more generous pour. But the third time, the third time you appear in that restaurant, for better or worse, you’re family.” So the waiter might whisper tips about what looks good back in the kitchen, smiles all around. If obligations carry you away from that little restaurant for, say, more than a month, the next time you show up, the owner comes out, asking where the hell you’ve been. “He feeds you like an angry mother for the first half of the meal,” my friend said, “then dotes on you for the rest.”

And so it seemed it was like this with Castilians in general. Open and curious, they appreciated any effort you might make to understand them and their land, but when that effort turned to commitment—when you appeared before them with regularity—well, then, you crossed over into intimacy, and they’d do anything for you, even get out of bed late at night to make sure you had some lamb chops.

“… following the arroyo of his deceit.”