Dear Friends,

We’re delighted to share the final issue of the 2025 Taramona Diaries with you. Looking back over the year has been quite a pleasure—reflecting on all that’s been accomplished, and on the many ideas and projects that will carry us into the exciting year ahead.

Despite some dramatic thunderstorms, the “jornaleros” have been busy harvesting this season’s olive crop and pressing it into fragrant, golden-green oil. When first pressed, the oil is luminously green—vivid and alive—with a punchy, peppery flavour that makes you pause and ponder on its fantastic properties. We produce our oil using a traditional press, layering capachos—flat, woven baskets—layered with the olive pulp, and slowly extracting the oil through pressure alone. The process is careful and deliberate: cold-pressing the earliest harvest before the olives ripen, preserving the polyphenols and nutrients that make extra virgin olive oil the medicinal staple it has long been revered as. It’s a slower, more hands-on method, yielding less oil but, we believe in producing extra virgin olive oil in its purest and most honest form. Our 2025 harvest is now resting in large vats, completing its final decantation before it’s bottled and sent out to you.

We reserve the “Gordal” olive variety for curing and serving, prized for its generous, meaty flesh. In the future, we hope to send you fresh olives so you can experience pickling them at home yourselves. Our method follows our dear friend Angelita’s recipe—less a formula and more a kind of countryside alchemy. Olives and brine are combined with whatever the land offers: wild thyme, pinecones, bitter orange peel, and stalks of wild fennel. Like the best recipes, there’s little science involved; flavour comes from intuition, seasonality, and what grows nearby. Once cured, the olives will keep all year in jars, ready to elevate any aperitivo.

In the quieter months, our talented chef Nacho continues tending his sourdough mother, baking generous loaves with stone-ground, old-grain flour. The bread is the perfect vessel for tasting our oil and forms a classic Spanish breakfast: toast rubbed with raw fresh garlic, lavishly doused in extra virgin olive oil, and finished with grated tomato.

The final weeks of the riding season with George were marked by heavy storms, but riders pressed on regardless—taking shelter in candlelit stone huts and warming themselves with glasses of locally distilled anis. This traditional distilled grape spirit, sweet or dry and scented with aniseed, is a daily staple here. Much like ouzo in Greece, pastis in France, or sambuca in Italy, anis is woven into everyday life; in winter, it’s not uncommon for workers to have a small glass at breakfast before heading out to harvest olives in the cold morning air.

Our village has a rich history of winemaking dating back to the 16th century, with its wines even featured in historical literature. Today, many of these old bodegas stand abandoned, with only a few still in use. Over time, several were transformed into anis distilleries—of which only two remain: Miura and El Clavel. Traditionally, the glass bottles were moulded with ridges so they could double as musical instruments, played with a spoon to accompany villancicos, the Christmas carols that still echo through the streets. Here are a few of our favourite labels from past distilleries.

With the storms now behind us, we’ve been making the most of the clear winter sunshine—heading out with the children for long walks and slow picnics in the countryside. It’s hunting season at the moment in this region, so when we’re really lucky, or rather if Jose Maria gets lucky, our picnic days turn into slow stewing venison over an open fire out in the hills.

As we look ahead to the New Year, there’s much to be excited about. We’ll be taking the family to Rajasthan, India, to run our winter rides, and we can’t wait to share those stories with you in the next issue. Closer to home, we’ve been discovering new routes and scouting locations for the Spring riding season. For George, few things are more thrilling than discovering new trails and camp spots, and on his most recent recce he encountered a herd of wild ibex in the dramatic valleys and sheer crevices of the Serranía de Ronda. This new four-day adventure ride—one we’re particularly proud of—is now open for enquiries. Spring will also bring the first of what we hope will be many new offerings, including a yoga retreat and a weekend of cross-country walking with local foraging experts.

Thank you to those of you who have shared adventures with us this year, as George always says, it is you who allow us to live the wonderful life we lead. We wish you all a very Happy Christmas and all the best in the new year.

Héloïse and Gigi

A Christmas in Cazalla

Summer in the Sierra