Vintages and Agricultural Fairs

Mid-May. The old page listed Archidona, Ardales, Nerja, Alcaucin and Benamocarra in Malaga province, and Guadix, Cogollos Vega and Cadiar in Granada, as “vintage fairs”. They are not. They are romerias and field days around San Isidro, the labourer’s saint. Cadiz and Jaen towns keep the same date. Expect a mass, a walk to a hermitage, horses, and a meal outdoors — closer to a pilgrimage than to a bodega.

The grape comes off in late summer. The public rite is the pisa: grapes trodden for the first must, often offered to a local Virgin. That is the picture. The rest of the week is tastings, bodega visits and a small-town fair that has grown around the harvest.

• Montilla (Cordoba) — Fiesta de la Vendimia of the Montilla-Moriles wines, usually the first days of September. Grape-treading, the first must offered to the Virgen de las Vinas, flamenco tastings and an equestrian display. It is a tourist-interest harvest, not the April Fair.
• Jerez (Cadiz) — Fiestas de la Vendimia, of international tourist interest. The treading is staged by the Cathedral. The same city holds the Horse Fair in May; do not confuse the two. Town: Jerez de la Frontera.
• La Palma del Condado (Huelva) — harvest of the Condado wines, usually late September, inside the town’s own fair week. The “nacimiento del vino” (birth of the wine) is the set-piece in Plaza de Espana.

Granada’s Virgen de las Angustias, in September, is the city’s patronal feast — processions and a fair — not “the premier agricultural fair”. Agriculture is in the background of every Andalusian feast. That does not make every patron a harvest festival.

San Miguel, at the end of September, is still the hinge for many ferias de ganado: cattle, horses, sometimes goats, shown and sold. Some towns keep a spoken deal and a handshake; most now need paper. Velez-Malaga runs a San Miguel livestock fair. Santaella, in Cordoba province, is one of the places where the old page said sales were still done by word of mouth — treat that as local colour, not a legal fact. Jubrique, in the Genal valley inland of Ronda, is better known now for its November chestnut week than as a cattle market.

Seville’s April Fair began as a livestock market in 1847. The cattle left; the casetas stayed. That story belongs on the Seville fair page, not here.

11 November. In the sierra the pig is still killed, quartered and made into sausages on or around that date. It is a household and village job, sometimes opened to visitors as a gastronomic day. It is not a fairground and it is not a vintage. If you are invited, it is food and work. If you are not, do not arrive expecting a ticketed show.

Cadiz is bull-breeding country. Alongside formal corridas, villages keep older street rites: a bull on a long rope (cuerda, soga, maroma) run through the town, or a short encierro with a glass of aguardiente first. These are not livestock sales and they are not the April Fair. They are rough, local and can injure people. Watch from a doorway if you do not know the street.

• Puerto Serrano — Toro del Aguardiente, on New Year’s morning.
• Arcos de la Frontera — Toro del Aleluya, in Easter week.
• Vejer de la Frontera — Toro de la Pena.
• Grazalema — Lunes del Toro. Sierra page: Sierra de Grazalema.
• Benaocaz — Toro de la Cuerda, often in the August fair: the animal is led on a thick rope through named streets and returned.
• San Roque — historically the Toro de la Soga; today the Toro del Aguardiente closes the August fair, with a shot of spirit before the run toward the ring.