The abundant air conditioning in our room made for a very good night’s sleep. We enjoyed a lovely breakfast – including yummy GF bread! – to start our day. Today’s big event: wine tasting!
Our guide, Martin, collected us at 10.00 and we climbed into the air conditioned van for our first winery stop. Javier San Pedro Ortega is a relatively new winery where we tasted one white and three reds. We learned all about the Rioja labeling system; we tasted mostly green labels which are young or signature wines. Two of them were okay and two I liked very much.
Then it was time for a short drive to a viewpoint to take in the whole valley and learn more history of the area and geographical stuff. I didn’t realize that Laguardia is officially part of the Basque country and as Martin is Basque, we learned a lot about the region, people, and something of the language.
Next stop: Ostatu winery. A much older family run winery, we learned a lot about terroir, old Spanish wine production laws, and the grapes that are common to the region. Here we tasted two whites and two reds – all of them green labels which and all of them delicious! Accompanied by cheese and chorizo, it was a great experience. We purchased a bottle of red to enjoy on our last night in Spain.
Last stop was a more traditional winery that produced more traditional Rioja wines. It was a very busy and somewhat impersonal tasting room. No one from the winery talked us through anything: they just poured and handed us a piece of paper with information- in Spanish of course. We did enjoy all the wines: Crianza – red label, 6 months in oak; Reserva – purple label, 13 months in oak, and Gran Reserva- blue label, 24 months in oak. They were very typical of the Rioja style and reminded me of what we can buy in Tesco.
Official tasting over, it was time for lunch – with wine of course. We went to a local restaurant that obviously caters to such groups. We started with the Burgos-style Morcilla, which is made with rice and is GF so I had no excuse for not trying it. (It was okay). We also had white asparagus and a mixed salad before the main course of lamb chops and roasted peppers. Yum! Another red and white to “taste” along with patxaran, an anise flavored liqueur that Frank really liked – as in way more than was good for him.
Luckily we had siesta to look forward to. Martin poured us out of the van with effusive goodbyes and we headed to the hotel for a much needed nap.
Several hour later, we ventured back out into town for a final wander of the picturesque streets for another meal (seriously nothing but eating!) and time to watch the town clock perform before calling g it a day.
Highlights from today:
- Learning so much about wines in the region and chatting with different knowledgeable people about the wines we’ve tasted in different parts of the world.
- Tasting a wide variety of wines and refining our palate just a little more.
- Spending most of the day in air conditioning so we didn’t have to shower twice for the first time this trip.
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