Our Spanish specialist Luis Gutiérrez has just been presented with the National Gastronomy Award for Journalism by Spain's Royal Gastronomy Academy. The Spanish Minister of Tourism made the presentation personally earlier this week.
Luis, an enormous lover of food and wine, and no chauvinist, told us, 'I cannot explain how happy I am for this recognition'. As outlined here when we introduced Luis in May last year to the growing team at JancisRobinson.com, he has a full-time job for Tetrapak in Madrid, but somehow manages to squeeze as many fine tasting opportunities as possible into his diary.
He has form as a particularly acute taster and has competed in major tasting competitions, sometimes with more concentration than in the recent Scandinavian adventure described in Nordic recommendations.
We congratulate Luis on his latest award, which follows on from last year's award for the book on Rioja he co-wrote with Victor de la Serna and Jesús Barquín.
Look out for Luis's report on Spanish Albariño and Portuguese Alvarinho next week.
