What began as an aromatic gift for my father’s 80th birthday, has become an attempt to capture the aroma of the many hours spent on horseback with him and my brother, on his cattle farm in Extremadura.
Those family walks across the lagoon in search of new born calves or to check the fences. The works with the cattle and the rheum of the grandchildren ripped from their beds at dawn so that they would “earn their toast”, as he likes to say. Those sweet and small oranges, taken from the vegetable garden, next to the aromatic plants, and the juices squeezed in the silence of a house that has not yet awakened.
The warmth of the horses, on cool spring mornings, mixed with the aroma of chamomiles and Spanish lavender raised by cows and horses as they pass by. The intense scent of leather of the harness house, full of boots, chaps, saddles and headbands.
And in the late afternoon, in the heat of the fire, the long conversations about the land. The anecdotes a thousand times told and listened to with the same renewed curiosity and fascination as ever. The puffs of smoke that come out of his pipe loaded with marine and exotic tobaccos, in honor of his favorite writer (Joseph Conrad) and the Havanos cigars during the after lunch, full of legendary names for bulls and toreros.
CASA CUERVO, contains the experience of a shared passion for nature and the countryside. It is my humble tribute to the tenacity of a man who, like the character in Jean Giono’s beautiful story, dedicates himself to planting trees year after year, filling the harsh lands of his Extremadura farm with future shadows and greenery. Simply because he has the conviction that the only way to do the right thing, without fear of being wrong, is by planting a tree.
This one is for my father!
