Moriles

The first thing you notice is the smell. Not olive oil, not orange blossom, but something darker and sweeter that drifts from the bodega doors on Calle Real every time someone enters or leaves. It’s the scent of Pedro Ximénez grapes fermenting into the treacly wine that bankrolls this pocket-sized Córdoba village, and by the time you’ve walked the 300 metres from one end of town to the other it’s worked its way into your clothes like smoke from a pub fireplace.

A town that ages in oak

Moriles stretches itself across a low ridge of chalky soil 65 km south of Córdoba, ring-fenced by vines that turn traffic-light green in April and burnish to bronze soon after the August fair. Barely 3,700 souls live here, enough to fill one London Underground carriage, yet the place supports 27 registered wineries and a cooperage that still hand-builds 600-litre butts from American oak. The economy is refreshingly simple: grow grapes, press grapes, wait. While the rest of Spain chased sun-and-sangria tourism, Moriles doubled down on centuries-old solera systems and ended up with a product that ships to Harrods and waits politely on the top shelf of UK delicatessens marked “PX, £18”.

You can see the soleras through dusty windows on almost every street. Row upon row of black barrels are stacked three or four high, each chalked with the year the wine went in – 1987, 1992, 1998 – so the bodega workers know which ones to rob for the sweeter blend that goes out the door. The routine is hypnotic: siphon a third from the oldest cask, top it up with wine from the next row, repeat until you reach the baby wine at the top. Do it twice a year for decades and you have the liquid that tastes of raisins, liquorice and the faint memory of Christmas pudding. Ask nicely at Bodegas Pérez Barquero and they’ll let you pull the venencia yourself, a silver cup on a whale-bone handle that scoops 50 ml in one fluid flick. The first sip is free; the second costs two euros and buys you a story about the 1956 frost that killed half the vines.

What passes for a centre

There is no plaza mayor in the usual Andalusian sense, just a triangle of pavement shaded by a single eucalyptus where the Thursday market sets up. Opposite stands the sixteenth-century church of San Mateo, sand-coloured and plain except for a single Baroque tower that used to double as the town’s lookout. Inside, the air is cool and smells of candle wax and old paper; the priest keeps the key to the sacristy on a hook by the door and will unlock it if you ask, revealing a seventeenth-century Virgin whose robes are changed every September to match the colour of that year’s must.

The streets radiate out in a loose grid, narrow enough that you can trail your fingers along both walls at once. Houses are whitewashed to a glare in summer and most still have the traditional blue trim that Andalusians insist keeps flies away. Front doors stand open from dawn to dusk, giving glimpses of tiled patios where grandmothers shell peas beneath dangling geraniums. Walk slowly and you’ll hear the click-clack of looms from a back room; one family still weaves the straw mats that protect the grapes from direct sun, selling the surplus to neighbouring villages for 12 euros a pop.

The edible timetable

Food here follows the harvest, not the tourist. Lunch is a 14:00 sharp affair and most kitchens shut by 16:30, reopening again only when the thermometer drops below 30 °C. The bar with the longest queue is usually Casa Paco, where the salmorejo arrives so thick you can stand a spoon in it and the flamenquín is the size of a baby’s arm. Vegetarians get a raw deal: even the spinach comes studded with jamón scraps. If you’re gluten-free, phone the owner the day before – his wife will swap bread crumbs for ground almonds in the cod stew and charge you exactly the same 9 euros everyone else pays.

Puddings are where Moriles stops being shy. Pedro Ximénez reduced to a glossy syrup and poured over vanilla ice-cream costs 3.50 € and tastes like alcoholic toffee. Drivers aren’t left out: mosto-grape-juice pastries deliver the same raisin hit without the licence-threatening ABV. Buy them from the bakery on Calle Ancha before 10:00 or resign yourself to day-old stock.

Beyond the tasting glass

You could spend a perfectly respectable weekend doing nothing but moving from bodega to bodega, but the surrounding countryside rewards a wander. A signed 7-km loop, the Ruta de los Viñedos, sets off from the old railway station (trains stopped in 1985) and threads through olive groves and low hills stitched with wire-trained vines. Spring brings poppies so red they look photo-shopped; autumn smells of damp earth and engine oil as the tractors trundle in with the last grapes. The path is flat, stony and mercifully shade-free in winter, which is when locals walk it. Summer hikers should set off by 08:00 and carry more water than they think necessary – temperatures sit in the high thirties from June to mid-September and there isn’t a kiosk for miles.

If you’d rather let someone else do the legwork, hire a bike from the petrol station on the A-45. They’ll lend you a helmet that smells of someone else’s aftershave and a hand-drawn map marking the five bodegas that open without appointment. Expect to pay 15 € for the day and bring photo ID; they keep it as collateral ever since a couple from Seville never came back.

When the village parties

Moriles doesn’t do quiet festivities. The last week of August is the feria, when the main street is closed to traffic and strung with paper lanterns that stay lit until the power company pulls the plug at 05:00. Half the town dresses in flamenco kit, the other half in Real Madrid shirts, and everyone ends up in the same marquee drinking fino from plastic civet hats. Accommodation sells out months ahead; if you must come, book a room in nearby Puente Genil and accept that you’ll be driving home on roads patrolled by Guardia Civil with breathalyser kits.

A softer experience is the vendimia (grape harvest) in mid-September. Picking starts at sunrise, but visitors are welcomed from 10:00 to stomp a barrel or two and earn a purple foot for their Instagram. The event is free, though you’ll be nudged towards the gift shop afterwards where 50 cl of vintage 1998 sells for 25 € – still cheaper than Waitrose.

Getting here, getting out

Moriles sits 45 minutes south of Córdoba on the A-45, a drive that passes through fields of sunflowers so uniform they look planted by IKEA. Public transport exists but treats timetables as an optimistic suggestion: one morning bus from Córdoba, one afternoon return, nothing at all on Sunday. Hire a car at the airport and you can combine the village with an overnight in Granada or a beach day at Nerja, each roughly 90 minutes away.

There are two small hotels and a handful of casas rurales; all clean, all friendly, all booked solid during feria. Mid-week in November you’ll have the pick of the bunch for 60 € a double, including breakfast that features a shot of PX because, as the owner shrugs, “it’s cheaper than coffee”.

Last orders

Come for the wine, stay because the 4G is patchy and you can’t be bothered to leave. Moriles offers no cathedrals, no Michelin stars, no souvenir tea towels – and that, for once, is the point. It’s a working village that happens to make something delicious and sees no reason to tart itself up for passing trade. Drink the 1985, buy a bottle you can’t pronounce, and remember to roll the windows down on the drive out; the smell will follow you for kilometres, a gentle reminder that some corners of Spain still run on grape time rather than Greenwich Mean.