David in Madrid

For most of his adult life David Silva has been answering the same questions:

“What’s your all-time favourite goal? Best game? Best player?”

At 14 Silva left Gran Canaria to join the Valencia youth academy.

“You’re alone and you have to compete. You become an adult very fast. I only saw my parents a few times a year. We lived there, we ate there, we trained there.”

From there he ended up as one of the all time greats at Manchester City for 10 years, as well as fulfilling the ultimate achievement winning the World Cup with Spain.

Now, though, his full time career is as a winemaker, producing under the label of Tamerán with his friend, winemaker Jonathan García Lima, at the vineyard he bought on the island of his birth in 2018.

Asking him about wine and food, the answers get longer.

“In seven years in wine I’ve made more friends than I did in twenty years in football.”

Why?

”In wine you share things. You share food, you share wine and you share conversation. In football you compete.”

For this story for Noble Rot magazine David spent two days taking us around his favourite places to eat and drink in Madrid. Always arriving at the designated time with a couple of tasty bottles from his home cellar tucked into his pockets. A modest, gracious man who spent all his time making sure that we got to also experience what he loves about those places.

Indeed, all he did was share.