Destilling anisette in the mountains of Seville

On Friday of last week I went to the towns of Cazalla de la Sierra and Constantina, both situated in the Sierra or mountainous region in the north of the province of Seville. My reason for going to them was to visit a few of the distilleries that continue to produce anisette and anisette-based liqueurs made with wild cherries. I am planning on adding a new route to those offered by my company “A Question of Taste”. This new route will include a visit to an artisanal producer of superlative goats’ cheese and then to one of the anisette distilleries. I visited the cheesemaker last Wednesday but stupidly left my camera at home.
I visited Cazalla de la Sierra first, a beautiful white town, with its share of historic building as well as lots of storks that nest on the churches and other high buildings. Below is a photograph of one.

The producer I visited is called Miura. Their installations are housed in an old Franciscan monastery that dates from the 16th century. They are very famous for their wild cherry liqueur. The wild cherries macerate in the anisette for months before bottling. Below is a photo of the distilling equipment. Heat is provided by burning holm oak wood from local trees.

As well as using wild cherries, they also produce a liqueur now with cultivated cherries and another with blackberries. All can I say is that they are all very good and far removed from a lot of the industrially produced liqueurs that use chemical essences and so on.
From Cazalla I then headed along a beautiful country road to Constantina where I went to see an anisette producer known as “La Violetera”. They are still family run and are very artisanal. The photograph below is of one of the owners showing me the wild cherries that macerate in the anisette. I tasted their wild cherry liqueur and it was as good as in the first place.