Luxury Spain

The Spanish hotel chain Palladium Hotel Group has over forty  years of experience with more than fifty hotels in six countries. One of its brands – Palladium Boutique Hotels opened the luxury Only YOU Boutique Hotel in Madrid which now offers  The Thai Room spa.

The Thai Room spa is a wellness centre which offers exotic and authentic Asian massages and treatments. The creator and director of the Thai Room concept, Vicente Martinez, said:

“The wellness concept is integrated into the Asian way of life. They live in a simple way with what they have and embrace the present as the best way to relieve stress. Our aim is that when the client experiences the treatments, they feel a sense of this philosophy and of this mental state, so genuine of the East.”

A member of the International Spa Association, The Thai Room Spa offers guests the ultimate experience of Asian therapy and the ancestral customs of India, Bali, Hawaii, China and Thailand.

A selection of massages and treatments which include Ayurveda yoga, Chinese medicine,  Jamú massage, an Indonesian tradition, Thai massage and other South East Asian therapies.

All your senses will come alive at the Thai Wellness Room. Natural oils, soulfulTibetan flute music, Thai harps, mantras, steam showers and silk cocoon wraps. Let the highly trained, experienced therapists rejuvenate you, mind, body and soul. By using their fingers, hands, elbows and at times their entire body, they will relieve every muscle and leave you feeling like never before.

As Only YOU’s PR Manager, Marta de Andres said:

“At Only YOU we pride ourselves on offering the best experience to our clients so we are truly delighted to be able to extend this to a unique and quality wellness experience. The new services at Only YOU Boutique Hotel are designed to meet the growing demand of clients seeking unique experiences at the hotel and we believe the Thai Room will offer our guests “the road to a new YOU”.

Doesn’t it sound like somewhere you should visit?

Only YOU Boutique Hotel.

If you’re looking for that perfect small, luxury hotel in inland Malaga that offers personal service, home cooking and a touch of luxury away from the hoards of beach-worshippers you need to head inland from the coast to the mountains or in this case the Serrania de Ronda.

Inland Malaga province has vast and beautiful swathes of nature, from rolling hills and moutain ranges to the stunning karstic limestone landscape of El Torcal.

I’m going to introduce you to two very different yet equally lovely small, rural hotels. The first one in this post is Hotel Castaños in Cartijima in the Serrania de Ronda near the town of  Ronda north-west of Malaga airport.

Cartijima is a charmingly small, unspoilt town in great walking country. Walk from the doorstep and lose yourself in pure nature, or follow waymarked routes for as long and far as you please.

After a day’s walking just relax on the roof terrace or in the hotel lounge  and dine on  Di’s home award-winning  Mediterranean-fushion cooking while sampling local wines or unusual gins.

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Hotel Los Castanos, Cartajima, Malaga

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Each room is individually decorated with views of the town and/or the horizon-reaching mountains. For even more impressive views the pretty plant-filled roof terrace provides a great relaxing, star-gazing, painting or drawing setting. For those who can doodle, you don’t even need to bring your own materials, they are provided in your room.

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Day or night the roof terrace is one place you will certainly spend some time. I did. I couldn’t take my eyes off those views and although I took lots of photos I really wished, up there in the silence and warmth of siesta time in rural Spain, that I could draw well.

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When life is slowed down for you by your surroundings you learn to appreciate the simple things of life. The peace, the lack of rush, hustle and bustle. When you’ve visited Hotel Los Castaños you will want to return. Everybody does.

See Hotel Los Castaños on Only Spain Boutique Hotels my boutique hotel collection.

The second small and luxurious inland hotel will be Cortijo Sabila in Villanueva del Rosario, Malaga – coming soon. Or see it now on Only Spain – Cortijo Sabila.

If you’re partial to Spain and white wine which one should you choose? Think of Sauvignon Blanc but Spanish and what do you get? Rueda! DO Rueda is in Castile and Leon, Spain’s largest region in the north-west. An area where over 6 million sq. feet of land is dedicated to vineyards and DO Rueda is just one of the DOs found in this wild, high place.

Leaving Madrid and heading north-west Castile and Leon spreads almost to the Portuguese border. Wine making almost certainly began here with the Romans but it was in the 11th century with the Catholic monks and priests that it really took off. These days it has the widest variety of wines from Rueda’s cool and pleasing to whites to the hefty reds of DO Toro.

Rueda town is south of Valladolid and next-door heading west to Toro  which is known for its tempranillo grape red wines and heading east to Ribera del Duero all three  are on the edge of the River Duero which winds its way through Portugal to the Atlantic.

DO Rueda make red, rose and sparkling wines but the real shiners and my favourites are the whites based on the Verdejo grape which have been grown in the Rueda region for centuries and it’s thought to be endemic to the area. It’s a fruity and floral grape making a refreshing and light wine great for pairing with aperitifs, fish and chicken.

It was only in the 1970s that the wines from the Verdejo grape became popular and in 1980 that it became an official Rueda D.O. For a white wine to be classified as a ‘Rueda’ it must be at least 50% Verdejo grape and to be a Rueda Verdejo it has to be at least 85% Verdejo.

Many of their wines are actually labelled ‘Verdejo’ so you’ll know exactly what you are getting. But Rueda or Verdejo they are easy to drink, refreshing to the taste and light on the pocket, yet not so light on the alcohol content as they are usually around 13% per cent alcohol.

Five Fine Spanish White Rueda Wines
These five fruity white Ruedas are available in my local Spanish supermarkets and are not expensive but definitely worth checking out of you can find them.

Nave Sur Verdejo – 2015  A floral, lemony and refreshing organic wine.
Vega de la Reina Rueda Verdejo – 2015 A citrusy with a touch of spice.
Carrasvinas Rueda Verdejo – 2015  Tropically fruity with pineapple and spice.
Verdeo Verdejo – 2015 My favourite – bright and acidy with fruity tones.
Marques de Caceres Verdejo – 2015  The name does it for me, silky citrus with tropcial tones.

Oro Bailen produce some of the best award-winning extra virgin olive oils with both national and international accolades under their belt. I visited the olive oil mill on the only grey, drizzly day we’d had for months but that didn’t dull the premises or enthusiasm and pride of the Oro Bailen team.

My GPS sent me around the edge olive groves, which at the time I didn’t realise belonged to Oro Bailen. The quality of their oils is precisely for that reason, they own and manage the olive trees and each stage of growth is cared for by their own team. The olives are harvested at the precise moment they choose and are taken from the olive groves to the mill and through the process to produce the incredibly rich ‘juice’ or liquid gold as it’s often referred to – gold is oro in Spanish.

When approaching from the front, the road from Bailen, the mill is quite imposing. Black railings with gold-coloured tips sets the standard I saw from arrival to departure and throughout the processing plant to the attractive shop where you can buy the products at source. This is slow food. Grown, produced and sold directly.

I was welcomed by Irene who speaks Spanish, English, French and German so you can choose whichever language you’d like to have your tour in. Taking about 1.5 hours it starts at the front of the factory where the tractors tip the freshly harvested olives into two large ground-level hoppers.

From the beginning of harvesting to the fruit arriving, being examined and the whole process of extracting the ‘juice’ begins is around 2 hours, minimising damage to the fruit and oxidation. The juice then rests for around 15 days before being filtered and stored ready for bottling.

From extraction to storage to bottling to shop the mill is clean and efficient, the whole ethos of excellence permeates every part of Oro Bailen – a gold star at every turn.

The shop holds a stylish array of black, green and gold bottles, tins and jars. Not only do they produce oils in bottle form but also in capsules, little pearls of explosive delight on the palate which also give a dish a distinctive look and a burst of flavour.

And then there’s the extra virgin olive oil marmalades made from the Picual and Aberquina olive creating a creamy, slightly sweet yet bitter spread for cheese, pastries or on fresh crusty bread. A blend of 50% olive oil and unlike most marmalades only 25% sugar.

A tasting session proves the colour of the juice or oil to be more green than gold and the aromas of fresh cut grass or very green apples, sometimes ripe bananas waft around.

My palate preferred the Arbequina oil, and visions of chewing the end of a fresh stalk of grass as a child came to mind with added hints of heat and bitterness.

I think I’m going to enjoy tasting olive oils as much as I enjoy wine tastings. Each was distinctive, each one very good indeed. Which one of the 300 plus mills should I visit next I wonder.

What did I go home with? A bottle of each.

My thanks to The Artisan Olive Oil Company who sell fabulous olive oils online and Oro Bailen for my visit.