Fontanars dels Alforins

The tractor idling outside the bakery at seven-thirty is the morning rush hour. By eight, the driver has finished his cortado and the single traffic light on Calle Major flicks to amber for the first time since yesterday. Fontanars dels Alforins, 90 minutes south-west of Valencia airport, keeps time with the fields, not the clock.

At 630 metres above sea level, the air is thinner and cleaner than on the coast. Night-time temperatures in May can dip to 8 °C even when midday hits 24 °C; bring a fleece and you’ll still be the only foreigner in town. The village sits on a shallow ridge between two folds of the Vall d’Albaida, a bowl of limestone stitched with vines, almond and centuries-old olive. Look south and the horizon is ripped by the craggy wall of the Serra de la Solana; turn north and the land drops away in wheat-coloured terraces towards the town of Ontinyent, 25 km distant.

Stone, tile and silence

There is no postcard plaza draped in bougainvillea. Instead, low houses the colour of dry biscuits line narrow lanes just wide enough for a laden grape trailer. Roofs are tiled in dark Arabic half-moons that rattle in winter gales; doorways are arched with the same honey-coloured limestone hacked out of local quarries. The only grand note is the parish church of Sant Pere, its bell-tower patched so many times since the fourteenth century that the stonework resembles a quilt. Step inside and the temperature falls five degrees; the smell is of candle wax and the previous night’s incense, not sanitiser and souvenir stalls.

Walk east for ten minutes and the streets give way to caminos vecinales, farm tracks that dissolve into vineyards. These are not the regimented rows of La Rioja; bush vines sit two metres apart, head-high, twisted like elderly bonsai. Many were planted in the 1940s by families who still press their own grapes in small stone sheds. If a gate is open you may be waved in to taste last year’s Tintorera straight from the tank—inky, peppery, nothing like the export Rioja stacked in UK supermarkets.

A wine route without coaches

Fontanars forms the western tip of the fledgling Ruta dels Vins d’Interior and, for the moment, the coaches have not worked it out. Three family wineries accept visitors by appointment, usually on Saturday mornings and always in Valenciano or slow, patient Castilian. At Bodega Celler del Roure, a fifteenth-century olive mill has been converted into a cellar lined with clay amphorae buried to their shoulders. A two-hour visit finishes in the old stable, now a tasting room, where a flight of four wines—blanco de verdil, malvasía, moscatel, monastrell—costs €12 and the owner still remembers your name a year later. Cards are accepted, but the machine is temperamental; cash smooths the way.

Monday is dead day. The bakery shuts at noon, the cooperative tasting room is locked and the solitary ATM on Calle Doctor Fleming often refuses foreign cards. Fill up with petrol before you arrive—the nearest station is 18 km back towards the motorway.

Walking the dry-stone lattice

A lattice of way-marked footpaths fans out from the village, but signage is intermittent and mobile coverage patchy. The easiest circuit is the 6 km Ruta de les Neveres, a two-hour loop that climbs gently through almond terraces to a line of nineteenth-century ice houses. From the top you can trace the valley’s geometry: dark green pines on the skyline, silver olive groves on the mid-slopes, squares of vine carpet on the valley floor. Take water; shade is limited and the only bar en route opens at the owner’s whim.

Longer hikes drop south into the Paratge Natural de la Solana, where limestone cliffs house peregrine falcons and the occasional Spanish ibex. A 12 km out-and-back from Fontanars to the Cova de l’Or cave paintings is feasible in half a day, but the final kilometre scrambles over loose scree—not ideal after last night’s tasting.

Almond blossom and pig fat

The kitchen smells of wood smoke and olive oil, not seafood. Breakfast is embutits—thin coins of cured pork loin and the local longaniza that tastes more of pepper than salt. Order it at Bar Joanet with a café amb llet and the bill is €3.40; they open at six-thirty for the farmers and close at two-thirty sharp.

Lunch is arroz al forn, a clay-pot bake of pork rib, black pudding and chickpeas that needs no accompaniment beyond a hunk of bread to wipe the terracotta clean. Vegetarians will struggle; even the judías come garnished with pancetta. Local whites—chardonnay and the indigenous verdil—are fermented in steel and left unoaked, closer to a Macon than to the vanilla bombs many Brits expect from Spain. A bottle in the village shop starts at €5.50, the same price as a glass in central Valencia.

The third week of February turns the hillsides into a snowfield of almond blossom. Spanish photographers arrive on Saturday, Brits are still rare, and room rates have not yet doubled.

Beds among the vines

Accommodation totals fewer than 30 rooms. The pick is Casa Vella de la Teuleria, an eight-room manor built in 1763 with metre-thick walls, beamed ceilings and a pool that looks across its own six hectares of vines. Doubles from €110 including a breakfast of home-made fig jam and warm coca flatbread. English is spoken—handy when the owner explains why the Wi-Fi dies whenever the irrigation pump starts.

Smaller budgets head for Celler del Roure’s guest apartment: two bedrooms, stone floors, kitchenette and a terrace that catches the sunrise over the Serra Grossa. Minimum stay two nights, €90 per night; breakfast not included, but the bakery is a four-minute walk.

When to come, when to stay away

Spring and early autumn are kindest. April brings wild marjoram and daytime highs of 20 °C; vines are neon-green, nights cool enough for proper sleep. September is harvest: tractors towing perforated trailers drip garnet juice along the lanes, and the air smells of crushed grape skins. By mid-October the leaves flare copper and the first wood smoke drifts from farmhouse chimneys.

August is fierce. Daytime temperatures nudge 36 °C and the village empties after breakfast; even the dogs seek shade under the parked cars. Mid-winter is crisp, often sunny, but dusk slips below 5 °C and the almond trees stand skeletal. Snow is rare—one dusting every couple of years—yet the wind scudding across the plateau can make a mockery of lightweight jackets.

Last orders

Fontanars will not entertain you with flamenco tablaos or souvenir tea towels. The pleasure is subtler: a wine that tastes of the very soil you walked that morning, a baker who remembers how you like your coffee, the hush that settles when the tractors park for the night. Arrive expecting nightlife and you will drive away within an hour. Arrive with sturdy shoes, a spare cardigan and an appetite for pork, and you may find yourself checking Rightmove before the weekend is out.