Spanish Wine Travelogue (January 2017)
Inspired by our friends Robbie and Silke R. (Barcelona), and our wine connoisseur Andreas W. (Hamburg), and following the recommendations of our Porto-based globetrotter Romas V., as well as our brother-in-law and former Madrileno, Stephen, Beata and I decided to use the festive break to start getting to know Spain a little better, and headed northwest from Barcelona to the Basque Country, via Navarra, returning via La Rioja. A first fantastic journey into this yet unknown and diverse country.
Navarra
Our First stop was Huesca, on the long 400+km drive from Barcelona to Olite (near Pamplona). We did not find the famed lamb promised by Stephen (not the season, temperatures around zero degrees, town empty), but ran into our first Michelin-mentioned tapas bar on this trip, TATAU BISTRO, purely by accident, and got a first inkling that food in Spain is not limited to tapas and jamon. Alcachofas with foie gras was a dish that was to return to please us (and add gravitas to the trip’s result!).
First nightfall saw us in Olite, a medieval town in which Carlos III, King of Navarre (‘El Noble’) created in the 13th century one of the foremost courts and castles of his time in Europe.One of the specialty foods in Navarra are vegetables, including white asparagus, fried peppers, and others.We stumbled on a wine that was to close this trip out, the PAGO DE CIRCUS from a Rioja vineyard some 50km south of Olite, in the Rioja Baja region.As we learned, PAGO is the highest denomination amongst wines in Spain, denominating a wine made from one finca/vineyard in close proximity to the Bodega (a new classification only introduced in 2003 by government fiat and not popular in Rioja whose bodegas do not need that classification given century-old respected denominations (joven, crianza – 12+ months barrique, reserva – 24+ months barrique, gran reserva – 36+ months barrique). A smooth hearty red that made us change our travel plans for the last day of the trip to pass by its Bodega.
The owner of the recommendable hotel in Olite, Hotel Merindad de Olite, who also owns vineyards (as one appears to do in these latitudes), recommended that we do not just see the Cistercian Monasterio de Olivo near-by, but also the fortified church-town Ujue, which rises above the fog-filled valleys during this time of the year, basking in the sun. And truly, emerging from dense fog to rise above the clouds with the flocks of sheep, and see the sun light up Ujue on the hill in the distance, it was magical. The church is inside a fortress, but today the inhabitants specialize in a famous dish, Migas del Pastor, made from bread crumbs … we held back our appetite for a special early New Year’s dinner in San Sebastian and passed.
Basque Country
Our first stop was San Sebastian (Donostia in Basque). Romas had called it the Rio of Europe, and on driving through Tyrolean mountain landscapes to suddenly land at the coast, full of granite blocks and amazing beaches, it was easy to see where the reference came from. All surfers were on the Playa de Gros, the eastern part of the town where we stayed (no Romas in sight though!), and on the western Playa de la Concha all the townfolks were walking, celebrating New Year’s by dipping in the sea, playing football on the beach (with arbiters, very organized these Basques!). While beautiful historic town architecture dominates the center of the old town, there is also a striking monument in the shape of the city’s coastline to remember the over 600 inhabitants killed by Francoist forces in paseos (extrajudicial killings) after it was occupied in the Spanish civil war in August 1936 (with 30,000 of the 80,000 inhabitants fleeing the town at the time). Food, however, is what really matters in Donostia, and the old town is home to a torrent of culinary experiences: pintxos is what tapas are called in this part of Spain, and they are a form of art, with competitions, cooking clubs (recently opened to women who are still not allowed into the kitchen!), and an overwhelming amount of pintxo bars with creative food bits stacked high on bar counters. The town has over 20 Michelin stars, with all of 195,000 inhabitants. A tragic older history, too, being occupied by Napoleonic troops in 1813 when Wellington with combined British/Portuguese troops laid siege to the town (then some 9,000 inhabitants), and – having suffered horrible losses in waves of attacks - breached the wall in September 1813 (La Bretxa in Basque, now a square with market hall and surrounded by Pintxo Bars), occupying the town, putting it to the fire, and killing many of its ‘third-party’ inhabitants – reminding me of Warsaw in WW2 between the Nazis and the Soviets; and by the looks of it, the Basques are just as determined and proud, deciding to rebuilt the town (and turning La Brexta into a positive in today’s town feature). [[1] Wellington denied the town assistance afterwards, and blamed the pillage and rape on the French. He was the same general who finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, but this ignominious episode was not previously known to us, and appears to have done little to harm his historic reputation. (Zosia did not apply to Wellington College …)]
We decided to celebrate New Year’s early on 30/12, and did something we had never done, having a 12-course tasting dinner in one of the three of San Sebastian’s 3-starred Michelin restaurants, the Arzak (run by a father-daughter team).Amazing dishes, creative, colourful, contrasting tastes and ingredients, washed down with a white wine with the beautiful name ‘Sin Palabras’ (Without Words), an Albarino (white grape) that grows exclusively in Galicia, specifically in the Rias Baixas region bordering Portugal. An experience to behold (but the pintxos and many less fancy places hold their own in terms of food creativity and quality.)
The Basques claim to be the oldest nation in Europe, obviously predating the Romans, and have a fiendishly complicated language to prove it. After 2 days of practicing, we finally managed to say Thank You, Eskerik Asko! Their constitutional square is called Konsti Square! Its loges/balconies are numbered since it used to house the bullring before that got moved out. We bought a Basque hat for yours truly, the last one my father had bought for me (and all of our family) back in Bretagne around 1978 … and of course the Basques do live on both sides of the French/Spanish border, and appear to have common roots with the Celts, the forebears of the Welsh, the Irish and some Scots.
Before we said a painful good-by to this enchanting town that is larger than life, we paid a visit to a famous monument by one of the Basque’s foremost graphic sculptors, the famous Peines del Viento by Eduardo Chillida, who hails from Donostia. The rusty steely ‘combs of the wind ‘ fit in that setting above the breaching waves on the black rocks, with La Concha in your back.
Before getting to Bilbao later that evening, we drove – as recommended by Stephen and Robbie – along the marvelous coastline, which is wild, changing between industrial towns, Tyrolean mountain landscapes full of sheep, Eucalyptus forests (sic!), lovely fishing villages that are now sleepy and mostly tourist destinations. We were enchanted by the story of the fishermen of Mutriko, which – like San Sebastian – used to be a whaling town until the wales moved to the western North Atlantic, and which at one stage came up with the idea to bring fresh fish to the court of the king in Madrid, driving it by horse-drawn wagon over 36 hours every second day as a commercial initiative that must have been a breakthrough in its day. Then you come across the beautifully-named Lekeitio, which has an island sitting in the bay, creating two beautiful half-beaches that mimic San Sebastian, another surfer paradise and a sleepy port with good tapas and loads of time. We did not make it to the surfers’ paradise at Mundaka, that’s for the next time, nor to the two restaurant suggestions by Robbie, which will also have to wait for the next trip (Kaie-Kapie of Getaria; Azurmendi near Bilbao).
We did, however, stop in Gernika, known to most of us as Guernica, mostly from Picasso’s painting that records the horror of the Nazi aerial bombardment in 1936 in support of Franco of this little town some 15km north of Bilbao. It was one of the first bombings of civilians by organized air power, and created mayhem, as Picasso’s evocative painting shows (hanging in Madrid). The town has a sculpture park and museum remembering the events, but appears to have moved on; it was the meeting ground of the Basque’s oldest parliament, under an old Olive Tree, which may have been one of the reasons it was chosen for the bombardment.
Bilbao – well, it’s not only the Guggenheim, even though the regional government’s courageous decision in 1998 to pay some USD 130m to fund the museum in the area of its old derelict port and industrial area was the starting point for an astounding urban renewal. Tucked between mountains that remind one of Rome’s location between seven hills, you drive through a long tunnel and then the Guggenheim hits you right between the eyes, after you drive through a symbolic taurus at the end of the bridge, a steel spider by the river grinning slyly at you. A charming old town, the same creative pintxo culture and wonderful cafes to go with that, plus that museum, incredible in its architecture and ambition, on time, on budget, and drawing the eyeballs towards it at all times, including from our lovely Hotel Miro with direct views.
Despite the freezing cold and wind, we unpacked the bikes (which were to blame for little wine being brought back to Barca) and braved the winds. In the old town we discovered that a flower looking very similar to Edelweiss, the mountain flower, is considered a good omen in Basque Culture and often hangs on houses to scare off evil spirits – Eguzkilore; the girls have earrings now to prove it!
La Rioja
Wine has been made in La Rioja since Roman times, with dozens of bodegas, but it is still under marketed outside Spain, and we knew French, Italian and New World wines a lot better, giving us a good excuse to make up some ground. Rioja is not just a wine denomination of origin (DOC), but also one of 17 autonomous regions in Spain. The wine area is made of up the Rioja Alta, the lower Rioja Baja, and the more mountainous Rioja Alavesa, closer to the beautiful Sierra Cantabria mountain range that separates Rioja from the Basque Country to the north (with some bodegas being in Basque Country, and some in Navarra, to add to the confusion). The Rioja runs along the Ebro river and some seven tributaries from NW to SE, and is crossed by the famous Camino de Santiago, which has been walked by pilgrims since the Middle Ages, adding to the region’s prosperity and well-developed tourist industry (and which Pit and Ryszard, our fathers, had walked together some 10 years ago).
With only 2 ½ days, we decided on the what is generally acknowledged to be the best wine museum in the world as a start, which is part of the VIVANCO Bodega near Briones, half-way between the two competing capitals of the Rioja, Haro (W) and Logrono (E). A wine estate in the 5th generation of one family, it has used only private capital to build up a very detailed museum worth touring to understand more about wine, and has built a modern bodega that makes wine only from its own 200 hectares of vineyards. We learned that 90% of wine made in Rioja is red (vino tinto and not rojo!?). While Garnacha used to be the dominant grape 30 years ago, it has been supplanted by Tempranillo, which now makes up 90% of vines; the other red grapes are Garnacha, Graciano, and Mazuelo. The latter two are often added in 5-10% to give acidity, structure and additional flavours to the dominant Tempranillo. White grapes include Viura, white garnacha (which Mayamiko introduced us to in Provence/Rhone), Malvasia (which we had encountered in Slovenia and Croatia) and white Tempranillo.
VIVANCO also runs a good bodega tour with limited tasting of their two key reds, the CRIANZA and the RESERVA, both of which we liked and bought a little of.Their specialty, however, is a mix of the four grapes (each individually harvested, fermented, and aged in separate barrels before final bottle maturation), as well as wines made from the three more exotic grapes Garnacha, Graciano and Mazuelo – at a price to match!
Our first night was spent in what Lonely Planet labelled a typical Spanish town on the Camino de Santiago, Santo Domingo de la Calzada – a small, medieval, charming town with 13th century town walls surrounding the somewhat stuffy local Parador (state-owned luxury hotel chain) next to the Cathedral on the main square.We found a busy little restaurant, finally had our lamb (cordero), and made a friend in Ramon Bilbao’s Crianza, one of the many bodegas headquartered in nearby Haro, where we duly acquired some cases the next morning before moving on to higher callings.
In reading up, we came across a little bodega called SIERRA CANTABRIA run by the Eguren family that produces its wine ecologically and in small quantities, and all according to PAGO methodology, i.e. each wine from a separate vineyard/finca. The description of one barrique-aged white containing Viura, white Garnacha and Malvasia caught our eye, as well as the name, ORGANZA, and we drove to lovely San Vincente de la Sonsierra, where Beata finally found their bottling line in a nondescript garage and talked an ageing accounting lady into selling us a case – and it was worth it!
The day’s highlight was waiting, however. We were hooked by Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum, and when we read that one bodega owner with ambitions of grandeur had retained the Californian architect to build a showcase hotel atop his wine cellars and bodega, and managed to get a Michelin star for the restaurant and Starwoods to run the 5-star hotel, we decided that a tasting menu for lunch at the MARQUES DE RISCAL in Elciego was one way to see the architecture close up – which we duly did!
As in Bilbao, the package was probably the best part of the day, the hotel’s architecture atop the classic bodega and amidst the vineyards quite unbelievable and beautiful, with the perspective onto the cathedral of Elciego and the stark mountains of the Sierra Cantabria behind it.Having done a tour of the bodega, which is becoming too large for its own good commercially (> 500 hectares and buying in from third parties, many shareholders, a well-run wine company but not a bodega with character any more), we got into Gehry’s hotel and had lunch on the first floor before having a coffee in the top-floor library. The lunch was outstanding, and of course we tasted some of the Bodega’s wines as well as good others. They ran out of the white that we liked, and the overprized Reserva was acquired in de minimis volumes.
For our penultimate night, I had selected Logrono on the basis that it was the nominal capita of the region – but had pangs of regret when on the way there to take pictures of the audacious architecture by Santiago Calatrava (who had much impressed us in Valencia) of BODGA YSIOS in Laguardia (not a NY airport!), we found that the latter was one of the ‘prettiest villages in Spain’, a medieval gem, and which below its hill-based village had hundreds of wine caves, the origins of which are not entirely clear. But Logrono made up for it. We had luckily chosen what turned out to be the best 3-star hotel in Spain, the highly recommendable Hotel Calle Mayor in the old town, in a converted 16th century palazzo. After a long day and way too much food and wine, we were about to call it a day when curiosity killed the cat, and we ventured out into the old town, which is small. And we stumbled onto a pintxo culture that bedazzled us, small streets, crowded at 2130/2200 at night, mostly locals in this out-of-season period, going with friends from one creative pintxo bar to the next, some specializing in specific foods. It is a wonderful eating culture, relaxed, social, affordable (pintxos priced at EUR 2-3 each, a glass of good wine at EUR 1.5-3 each), a feature that does not allow social or income divisions to infringe on the culinary feast. There were competitions, and a pride in this form of culinary diversity that was infectious. Logrono who? – no longer!
Modernismo is an architectural style made famous in Barcelona by Gaudi (with Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch two other exponents that we only learned about since moving to Barcelona). Gaudi initially used the refuse of ceramics factories to adorn his buildings, but azulejos were a key ingredient of Moorish architecture and are widespread in Spain (and Mexico where we first encountered them in that form). Beata would have been their apprentice if born a century earlier … this way she seeks out ceramics producers wherever she can, and proved her sherlockian skills once more in finding a 74-year-old local legend of pottery at Navarette near Logrono, where we spent a good hour chatting to him about his work and his worries about which of his children will continue the trade, acquiring some plain but beautiful products along with a taurus, of which he sells plenty during the annual July bull run in nearby Pamplona.
Thanks to Robbie, who had served a Gran Reserva to close out a memorable dinner by Silke, we had come across the BODEGA MARQUES DE MURRIETA just before our trip, and had promptly integrated it after the hard-to-beat Marques de Riscal. It is located just outside Logrono on the famous Ygay Estate acquired by the founder, a Spanish noble repatriated from Peru via London when Spain lost its Latin American colonies in the 19th century. The bodega only does mature well-aged wines (the Reserva is its entry wine), and in the cellars we visited there were many years from between the two world wars lying in temperature-controlled and beautifully restored old buildings, reconstructed since 1983 under the ownership of the first post-family owner, Vincente Cabrian, the Conte de Creixel. MURRIETA (and even more YGAY) are known to barrel wines for decades; just recently their recently released (!) Ygay 1986 white was the first Spanish white to be awarded 100 points by Parker … we passed on one of the few remaining EUR 500 bottles … but it is testimony to their philosophy and focus on quality and maturing of wines. Great on the palate, painful on the wallet (and on working capital requirements, financed by Barcelona’s LaCaixa)!
We had a nice tour of the Bodega, which took in history, wine-making philosophy, and the transformation under the new owner, followed by a wonderful tasting accompanied by selective tapas. This was led by the charming and very well-informed 16-year employee of the Bodega, Miriam Ochoa Arroniz, who had accompanied the transformation and expansion under new ownership from the near-beginning. She patiently explained, first in Spanish and then in English, the various wines, their philosophy, make-up, characteristics, accompanied by an excellent selection of warm and cold tapas from the kitchen, with our own personal Guatemalan waiter. It was an exquisite experience and we ended up buying all the wines we tasted, including some of the estate’s masterpieces, as listed below and in the scanned attachment: Galician white PAZO BARRANTES 2015 (100% Albarino), fresh yet supple; Marques de Marrieta 2011 RESERVA, balanced and wonderful; CAPELLANIA 2011 (100% Viura), which benefits from 15 months in oak barrels to give it grace; the DALMAU 2012 (a red that includes a smidgen of local Cabernet Sauvignon to go with the Tempranillo, giving it oomph and depth, my favourite; and the 2007 GRAN RESERVA, 26 months in barrique and 36 in bottles, just marvelous. The YGAY 2007 GRAN RESERVA ESPECIAL awaits the readers of this travelogue on their next visit to Barcelona (while the small supplies last)! [Turns outs both Marques de Riscal and Marques de Murrieta use wine glasses from Schott Zwiesel in Bavaria, a plant that I have visited and a company that also prides itself on its professionalism and technological progress.]
Finally, we closed out the visit with an overnight stay at the unreal Chateau Pago de Cirsus, an over-the-top neo-medieval castle recently refurbished and turned into a 200-hectare bodega by Spanish filmmaker Iñaki Núñez (who recently sold to new Venezuelan owners we are told). We had been impressed by the smooth Pago de Cirsus in Olite and spent a night there, which turned out to be January 5th, the evening when Spain celebrates the ‘Dia de Reyes’, known as Epiphany or Three King’s Day in the rest of Europe; it appears to be nearly as important as Christmas Day, judging by the amount of cribs we saw depicting the three kings on our short trip. So we joined a decidedly odd crowd in this next-to-nowhere location that would not have been out of place in a Fellini movie, on one last night of too much food. The accompanying Chardonnay and Rose from the estate were disappointing, and the bodega’s hallmark red, the Pago de Cirsus, did not make the same impression as the first time around after a week of good Riojans. All the same, we shall be back soon (hopefully with some of our wine-loving explorer friends), and to make more friends in these incredible regions.
