A younger me dismissed the idea of going to Menorca. ‘Quiet’, ‘rustic’, ‘great for families’ said the brochure. I was unmoved. “Nothing going on here,” I thought. I wanted two-for-one happy hours, disco boats and hangover fry-ups. Ibiza or Mallorca maybe. Menorca? No.
Nowadays I have a family of my own. On holidays I go to absurd lengths to eat like a proper local and my idea of hell is other people’s disco boats. I was ready for the quieter side of the Balearic Islands.
COWS, GIN AND ‘GREVI’
Driving around Menorca, it soon becomes clear you’re in a tack-free zone. Rather than signs advertising nightclubs and mega-resorts, you’re more likely to see ones inviting you to buy artisan cheese (see Meet the Cheesemaker, p121). It was the British, in charge for much of the 18th century, who introduced the dairy culture here and stirred a teaspoon or two of their culinary legacy into the Menorquín dialect with words like pudin (pudding) and grevi (gravy).
The British influence on food and drink is also obvious at the 300-yearold Xoriguer (Shori-GAIR) gin distillery (xoriguer.es/en) in the handsome capital of Mahón. It was set up by an enterprising local miller (hence the windmill on the bottle) to quench the British navy’s thirst for the stuff.