Almond

The almond is the nut of Alhama's terroir: the almond tree climbs the slopes of the Andarax valley and the Sierra de Gádor where the olive stops, and carries on to the high drylands of the province. It is a crop of patience — dry farming, pruning and waiting: across Andalusia, 84% of almond groves are still worked without irrigation — that Almería practises on a grand scale: more than 37,000 organic hectares according to 2026 sector data which, together with Granada, gather almost all of Andalusia's organic almond groves; Los Vélez and the Alto Almanzora alone count some 57,000 hectares. Provincial figures, not municipal ones: the bond with Alhama comes from the archives — at the Los Frailes estate, the almond tree arrived after the olives, the cereals and the parrales.

Its finest moment comes when no one expects it: between late January and February, the almond trees of the Alpujarra and of the hills around Alhama blossom white and pink in the middle of winter. It is one of the great reasons to visit the interior in low season — the hiking routes and the valley's viewpoints then look out over a snowfield of flowers.

The harvest, though, belongs to summer's end: in August and September the trees are shaken and the almonds head for the pantry. The Guara rules many Andalusian drylands, alongside the Comuna, the Largueta and the Marcona, and recent plantings add late-flowering varieties that dodge the frosts — the names of a provincial varietal landscape, not a selection of Alhama's own. From the pantry come ajoblanco, the cold soup that turns the almond into a dish, and the almond sweets that run through all the pastry-making of the south-east.