Food and wine holidays in Spain

We have lived in Montefrio for 3 years and in this time we have really became part of the community. When we came here we were amazed with the real sense of community and we wanted to be included. We regard our suppliers as close friends; often we will be taken aside to be shown the latest produce, share a joke and recipes. This is very important to us as sadly we see the demise of the local butcher etc in other countries to be taken over by the larger companies who only really have interest in profit.

Over the years we have worked as hard as we can to reduce our impact on the planet and over the time we have been here we have found ourselves having many interesting conversations with customers about this, many commenting that they "have left greener than when they arrived". Our approach is not to be in your face but show how simple practices can make all the difference such as installing low energy lamps and making sure all domestic appliances are of the lowest energy outputs.

We buy our vegetables at the local market every Monday. We sell locally produced goods from our home, from cheese from the local factory to handmade baskets made by an old man that we chanced upon near the market one day (his face was a picture the day we bought his entire stock when he was hoping to sell us one basket). We always rave to people about how good the local products are and people think the Montefrio olive oil is a fantastic present to take home to family and friends.

The house is an existing building that we have refurbished and is built to a traditional Spanish style with three feet thick walls that helps keep the outside temperature outside, so their is no need for air conditioning and in the winter we have a log burning fire, the logs that we use are from the olive trees that are pruned every year at the end of olive season by the local farmers they take these cuttings away and dry them out over summer and are ready to use by winter, this is a practice that both helps the trees and the local farmers and has been practiced for hundreds of years.

The property's water is not mains fed so it was important for us to fit such things as double flush toilets and special water saving showers domestic appliances. We do not have brochures, relying instead on the internet and word of mouth, helping us keep damage and costs down. Even though we are only a small business we do our best to help the local economy by allowing the local farmers to farm our olive trees without any charge and sourcing our food, etc locally. Montefrio is almost self sustainable as a town, producing some fantastic food.