Where Wine Flows Like Water: A gastronomic pilgrimage across Spain

by John McAneney

This is the second edition of 'Where Wine Flows Like Water: A Gastronomic Pilgrimage through Spain', which chronicles the sometimes hilarious adventures of two friends, John and Pete, walking the pilgrim trail, El Camino, some 1000 kilometers from the French side of the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in North-western Spain. Often lost, usually confused and frequently overcome by the rigours of the march, heady wine, spicy food and beautiful women, our middle-aged protagonists experience many of the deprivations and most of the pleasures as once did the legions of pilgrims in medieval times seeking redemption and indulgences for past and future crimes. With gusto, John and Pete confront the Old World and the uninhibited pursuit of pleasure that characterises Southern Europe. This sometimes leads them to overdo things, but always with the best of intentions. Wine tasting their way towards salvation, they innocently explore intriguing points of gastronomy, theology and the vexed relationship between religion and science. A selection of recipes from the kitchens of friends along the route offers an exotic smorgasbord of regional cuisines of France and Northern Spain. These recipes are, in the main, family dishes, the plates of everyday life and not the fare of celebrity chefs and Michelin stars. They provide a testament to a highly varied, flavoursome and unpretentious cuisine.

199 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 2012

About the author

I began my working life in the navy before following a career in science. After gaining a PhD in Madison, Wisconsin, I've worked in France, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. In "Where Wine Flows like Water", I chronicle the adventures of myself and a friend as we walked some 1000 kilometres along El Camino, the pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostela in NW Spain. The book features a collection of regional dishes from the kitchens of friends along the route. A second edition of "Where Wine Flows like Water" is now available on Amazon.

For some years, I was based at a small research station in the Bay of Islands, in the northern-most part of New Zealand. This is an area with a rich colonial past and a place to which people are drawn for its sailing opportunities, climate and coastal scenery. It has a well-deserved reputation of eccentricity. For some of this period, Delphine and I and our two children chose to live at a remote beach on Maori tribal lands. My novel "Shifting Sands" grew out of this experience.

These days, I'm the Managing Director of Risk Frontiers at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Risk Frontiers is an independent research centre studying the impacts of natural perils - floods, hail storms, bushfires, volcanic eruptions and tropical cyclones - on communities in the Asia-Pacific region and modelling and pricing these risks for the insurance sector.