There are meetings that transcend the agenda to become a declaration of intent. Bringing together those who work to preserve, disseminate, and promote the gastronomic culture of a region does not simply consist of seating them around a table. It means choosing a place capable of representing the values one wishes to defend: identity, memory, product, craft, hospitality, and future.
That was the significance of the plenary session held by the Castilla-La Mancha Academy of Gastronomy at La Hospedería Nuestra Señora del Rosario, in El Provencio. The choice of this location was not accidental. The Academy convened at an establishment that has made heritage recovery, cuisine linked to the territory, and gastronomic tourism the pillars of a project with a profoundly Manchegan identity.
The meeting allowed the focus to return to an increasingly visible reality: haute cuisine does not belong exclusively to major capitals or established tourist destinations. It is also born in villages, alongside the fields where its ingredients are grown, in kitchens that know the origin of each product, and in establishments that understand that offering an excellent experience involves respecting the culture of the place.
La Hospedería represents this way of understanding dining.
Its restaurant was recognized as the best restaurant in the province of Cuenca at the V Rural Gastronomic Brooches 2025, a distinction promoted to give visibility to rural establishments that contribute to preserving and elevating the gastronomy of Castilla-La Mancha. The recognition was received by Diego Calero Parreño, owner of the establishment, accompanied by chef Emilio Ramírez.
But the celebration of the plenary session held a value that went far beyond the award.
It allowed the institution, the team at La Hospedería, and an essential part of the Cuenca pantry to be brought together in the same space: the Purple Garlic of Las Pedroñeras, a product with Protected Geographical Indication and one of the most representative ingredients of regional cuisine. It also served to recall the documentary in which chef Emilio participated by contributing his gastronomic interpretation of this product, a symbol of an agriculture that sustains economy, landscape, and culinary memory.
All of this took place within a building that also has a story to tell.
Before becoming a four-star hotel and restaurant, La Hospedería was the winery of El Provencio’s first wine cooperative. For decades, its facilities received the fruit of the harvest from generations of farmers. Today, that recovered industrial heritage once again brings people together around the table, albeit with a new mission: to transform the roots of La Mancha into experiences capable of moving the contemporary traveler.
The celebration of the plenary session of the Castilla-La Mancha Academy of Gastronomy thus confirmed an essential idea: when gastronomy, heritage, and territory are viewed as parts of the same narrative, a restaurant ceases to be merely a place to eat. It becomes a space from which to interpret a region.
The Castilla-La Mancha Academy of Gastronomy arrives in El Provencio
The Academy’s visit placed El Provencio at the center of the regional gastronomic conversation.
During the day, the academicians were able to learn firsthand about La Hospedería’s project, tour its spaces, and approach a culinary proposal built on respect for raw materials, Manchegan gastronomic memory, and a contemporary perspective on the craft.
The choice of the establishment to hold the plenary session also represented an implicit recognition of the path traveled by the entire team.
La Hospedería was not born as a restaurant disconnected from its surroundings. From the beginning, its identity was linked to the history of El Provencio, to the old cooperative, to wine, to the agricultural landscape, and to the producers who keep the rural economy alive. This connection is perceived in the architecture, in the wine tourism proposal, and, especially, in the cuisine.
A plenary session held around regional identity
Gastronomic academies perform a function that goes beyond recognizing restaurants or promoting certain products.
Their work also consists of researching, protecting, and disseminating a culinary heritage that is not always preserved through written documents.
Many recipes, techniques, and knowledge have been transmitted orally.
They have passed from mothers to daughters.
From farmers to cooks.
From small family farms to markets, taverns, and restaurants.
Traditional cuisine forms part of what is known as intangible cultural heritage: a set of knowledge, habits, and expressions that help explain how a community relates to its environment.
In Castilla-La Mancha, this relationship between cuisine and territory is particularly intense.
The climate, the breadth of the landscape, dryland agriculture, pastoral culture, and the historical need to make use of every resource shaped a gastronomy based on the honesty of the product and on the ability to transform apparently simple ingredients into preparations full of identity.
Garlic.
Olive oil.
Grain.
Wine.
Cheese.
Game meat.
Vegetables.
Each of these products forms part of a gastronomic narrative that speaks of adaptation, knowledge, and survival.
Holding the plenary session at La Hospedería allowed this discourse to be transferred from the institutional sphere to a real setting, where many of these ingredients continue to be interpreted daily from the kitchen.
The Rural Gastronomic Brooch: a recognition born from the territory
The meeting was inevitably linked to the recognition obtained by La Hospedería at the V Rural Gastronomic Brooches 2025.
These awards were created to make visible the work carried out by restaurants located in rural municipalities, establishments that perform a decisive role in keeping culinary heritage alive and generating economic activity outside major urban centers.
In the case of La Hospedería, the award as best restaurant in the province of Cuenca recognized a proposal that combines signature cuisine, local product, professional service, and a close connection with the gastronomic landscape of the region.
The award should not be understood solely as a distinction for a menu or a succession of preparations.
It also recognizes a model of establishment.
A project capable of recovering a historic building.
Creating employment.
Supporting producers.
Attracting visitors.
Generating experiences around wine and gastronomy.
And demonstrating that excellence can also be built from a rural municipality.
Rural gastronomy no longer occupies a secondary role
For years, many travelers associated haute cuisine with major cities.
However, the gastronomic landscape has changed.
More and more chefs are developing their projects near the origin of ingredients. The number of travelers willing to travel to small municipalities to discover restaurants with their own personality, artisan producers, and experiences linked to local culture is also increasing.
The rural environment offers something difficult to reproduce in other settings: real proximity.
The closeness between the restaurant and the countryside.
Between the chef and the producer.
Between the dish and the landscape that inspires it.
When this proximity is accompanied by technique, creativity, service, and a carefully crafted presentation, the gastronomic experience acquires a special depth.
At La Hospedería, the diner does not merely taste a preparation. They also approach the history of a wine-growing territory, the memory of an agricultural cooperative, and a way of understanding hospitality that has evolved without renouncing its roots.
Emilio Ramírez: a cuisine that begins long before reaching the plate
Within this project, the figure of chef Emilio Ramírez occupies an essential place.
His cuisine is based on a clear conviction: excellence does not begin at the stove, but in the selection of the ingredient.
Before technique comes the product.
Before presentation comes origin.
Before creativity comes respect.
This way of understanding the craft explains why his proposal connects so naturally with the values defended by the Castilla-La Mancha Academy of Gastronomy.
Emilio develops a cuisine capable of recognizing tradition without limiting itself to reproducing it. The flavors of the territory serve as a starting point for building contemporary, precise, and balanced dishes, where technique is at the service of the ingredient and not the other way around.
This approach is particularly important in a region with a pantry of enormous personality.
Working with Manchegan products requires knowing their nuances, their seasonality, and their cultural context. It is not enough to incorporate them into a recipe as a decorative element. It is necessary to understand what they represent.
Cooking the territory without turning it into a postcard
One of the main risks of gastronomy linked to tradition consists of falling into superficial nostalgia.
Turning regional cuisine into a succession of predictable references.
Repeating recipes without interpretation.
Using local product solely as a promotional argument.
Emilio’s cuisine moves away from this vision.
His proposal does not reproduce an idealized image of La Mancha, but rather dialogues with it. It recovers flavors, recognizes ingredients, and takes collective memory as a reference to develop contemporary cuisine.
The result is a recognizable but not static gastronomy. A cuisine that can move those who know the territory and, at the same time, surprise the traveler discovering it for the first time.
The Purple Garlic of Las Pedroñeras: much more than an ingredient
The celebration of the plenary session allowed another of the great narrative threads of the day to be recovered: the Purple Garlic of Las Pedroñeras.
This product, protected by a Protected Geographical Indication, constitutes one of the most important agricultural and gastronomic symbols of the province of Cuenca. Its intense flavor, characteristic aroma, and distinctive qualities have made it an essential component of numerous traditional preparations of Castilla-La Mancha.
Its relevance, however, is not limited to cuisine.
Behind each head of garlic exists an agricultural landscape, knowledge transmitted for generations, and an economic activity of enormous importance for numerous municipalities in the region.
Speaking of Purple Garlic means speaking of farmers.
Of harvest campaigns.
Of selection.
Of drying.
Of marketing.
And of a territorial identity built around a product that has managed to differentiate itself through its quality and origin.
From the field to haute cuisine
The relationship between Emilio Ramírez and the Purple Garlic of Las Pedroñeras was reflected in the documentary recalled during the plenary session, in which the chef of La Hospedería developed his own gastronomic proposal around this ingredient.
The presence of a chef in this type of project fulfills a fundamental function.
The farmer preserves the product.
The regulatory body guarantees its origin and traceability.
The researcher documents its characteristics.
And the chef interprets it, demonstrating to the diner all its gastronomic potential.
In this way, the ingredient ceases to be viewed solely as a raw material to become a cultural element.
A garlic can form part of a traditional recipe, act as an aromatic base, take center stage in a contemporary preparation, or be transformed through processes such as fermentation and aging.
Haute cuisine expands its possibilities, but its true value continues to be born in the soil.
La Hospedería, a building born from wine that today also protects gastronomy
The Academy’s meeting acquired even more meaning by being held within a former wine-making space.
The history of La Hospedería began in 1950, when the farmers of El Provencio founded the Nuestra Señora del Rosario Local Field Cooperative. Four years later, faced with the impossibility of storing all production in existing wineries, they promoted the construction of a new cooperative winery.
That collective decision responded to an economic need, but also represented a way of understanding the territory.
Cooperate.
Share resources.
Improve production.
And guarantee a future for families linked to the vineyard.
Decades later, the building was recovered to house a new project.
The old winery was transformed into a unique hospedería, preserving the memory of the building and returning it to life through tourism, dining, and culture.
Today, where the farmers’ wine was once stored, professional meetings, wine experiences, and institutional gatherings such as the Academy’s plenary session are held.
The use has changed.
The essence remains.
The building continues to bring people together around the products of the land.
