A grape way to start a new year

 A very Happy New Year to all, whether regular readers of this blog, or just passing visitors.

I hope you all managed to enjoy some celebrations of some kind to see in 2022, even if, for the second year running, they weren't quite as you might have wanted them to be. While it is always sad when traditions observed at annual celebrations with family and friends are forced to change or be missed, it makes them all the more special when you do get to do them again. Fingers crossed for a return to a normal Christmas and New Year in a little under 12 months' time.

Talking of traditions, in Spain, there is a special way of seeing in the New Year by eating a grape on each chime of the clock as it rings out for midnight, to bring good luck in the year ahead. Each of the grapes represents a month in the coming year.

I had heard of the tradition before, but didn't really appreciate quite how widespread a custom it was in Spain until noticing on the food-sharing app OLIO that someone had listed some tins of grapes to give away. 

I was interested initially as grapes aren't generally something you come across in tins. From the listing though the tins looked remarkably small - far smaller than a standard tin of fruit. The wording on the tin said "12 Uvas de las Campanadas" - surely the tin didn't contain only 12 grapes? That did however ring a bell with me about the grape-eating tradition - appropriately so, given that "Uvas de las Campanadas" translates as Grapes of the Bells or Chimes (the English word campanology, for the art or practice of bell-ringing, comes from the same root).

So, this was a tin of grapes specifically produced for consumption at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. Clearly there was no other time to try it. I was amused to see though that the expiry date on the tin was 31st December 2024. Some might say this begs the question of whether it would be ok to use the tin on New Years Eve that year, as you'd actually be eating the grapes at the very start of 2025, after the expiry date. You'd have to be a real stickler for best before dates though. Personally I am not in the least bit concerned by such things, and would think this tin would be fine until the end of the decade, so to be opening a tin three years before its expiry date was quite rare for me.

Not having a chiming clock myself at home, I set up my laptop a little before midnight, showing the BBC's New Year coverage. While those in Spain will typically eat their grapes along to the chimes of the Royal House of the Post Office in Puerta del Sol in Madrid, I was going for the British equivalent - Big Ben. My plan had been to be to open the tin just as the final 'build-up' chimes were ringing out, and then skewer and eat a grape with a cocktail stick on each of the twelve of Big Ben's bongs. And in a first for this blog, I thought I would try to film the entire thing on my phone.

Well, that didn't work. I should really know by now that it is nigh on impossible to open a tin with one hand - even when it has a ring pull - while holding your phone in the other. So I very quickly had to abandon the filming idea, and I only just got the tin open as Big Ben started ringing.

It then proved trickier than expected to actually skewer the grapes from the tin - they didn't seem at all keen to be impaled on my cocktail stick, somehow finding space in the tiny tin to slip out of the way each time I tried to jab it in. I very quickly became behind on my eating of the grapes along with the chimes.

Eventually I had to dispense with the stick entirely, fish into the tin with my fingers and just cram a couple of grapes at a time into my mouth to catch up with the bongs.

While my technique for consuming them left plenty to be desired, the grapes themselves weren't bad at all. The only experience I have of tinned grapes is those you get in a tin of fruit cocktail, usually only a couple per tin, rather disappointingly small, squidgy tasteless things. These ones, were still much softer than fresh grapes in their prime (perhaps due to being 'peladas' - i.e. peeled), but were larger and more robust than I expected, and had lost none of their flavour. 

A number of them did still have small pieces of the stem attached to them though, which made me wonder quite how this was possible, given that they had presumably gone through some sort of manufacturing process to peel them. Surely that would have removed any pieces of stem too? The tin also said that they were 'sin semillas' (seedless), but some of the grapes definitely had seeds in, albeit quite small and soft ones. 

There was a small amount of juice/syrup left in the tin which I knocked back afterwards, then wished I had saved it, and mixed it with some sparkling water or lemonade - in my childhood, we would usually see in the new year with a glass of Schloer sparkling grape juice, being too young for champagne or some other sparkling wine (I think Cava was more prevalent than prosecco in those days), and it would have been quite nice to try to recreate that memory.

Anyway, all in all it was a fun way to see in the new year. I should really have decanted the grapes from the tin onto a plate in advance of midnight, which would have made it much easier to eat them as intended. I just hope that my failure to eat them precisely along with the 12 chimes won't affect my luck in 2022 too much  - goodness knows we could all do with some after the last couple of years.