Tuned out | The Spectator

A drinker’s diary

It is a crisp, beautiful spring day as I write. The air is light and clear. The skies are a color I have always thought of as Virgin Mary blue, punctuated here and there by attractively arranged puffs of clouds at their whitest and least threatening. The greens of the verdure are at their most flashing and emerald-like. That freshness will be enveloped by summer fullness by the time you read this, a contingency that makes me conclude that something like an abbreviated wine-diary — some of what Kimball drank during the month of May — might appeal to the connoisseurs and aficionados of the column. Let’s start at the tip-top.

James Jeffrey

A dispatch from the olive oil capital of the world

It was an extraordinary sight. For three days, and about seventy kilometers of hiking, there were just endless olive trees covering the fields, hills and mountains stretching to the horizon of the small Spanish province of Jaén. Tucked away in the southern region of Andalusia, this is the country’s powerhouse of olive-oil production. Many people assume Italy or Greece are the largest producers of olive oil. That’s a result of good branding and name recognition, a Jaén-based olive grower told me. After he pulled up alongside me in his dusty car, we walked through the endless olive groves as I was given a tutorial on olive oil production. Spain is the world’s top producer of olive oil.

Nicholas Clairmont

Where to drink in Miami

Ask anybody who’s really been in a band what being a musician is like, and they won’t tell you about the moments that make it into the Hollywood biopics. To them, the experience is not the hero-shot onstage, or the girls they picked up after a killer set, or anything you saw in Ray or Bohemian Rhapsody. The reality of being in a band is of driving from place to place. Think of Bob Seger’s baleful “Turn the Page” with its opening lyric setting the place: “On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha,” where he’s “ridin’ sixteen hours and there’s nothin’ there to do.” This raises an issue of where to drink in Miami.

Food & Drink