Rumbo al Norte – The Grand Finale (part I)

We woke up and it was foggy.

Not even foggy, really. Before getting out of bed I asked Boyfriend what the weather was like. Wet, he answered, which summed it up pretty well. The sky was wet, the earth was wet, the air was wet.

We had breakfast in Haro, land of wine, and walked around the old part of town quickly. We even tasted a vermouth in a shop that sold glasses of the things it sold. It wasn’t great.

I really like this next photo. It’s a strange, crooked house that once was coloured in red and blue diamonds that reminded me of arlecchino.

Next, we went about 30 kms away to the Montecillo wine cellar. It wasn’t our first choice but it was the only place that was available with less than 24 hours notice and on a Sunday. Note for travellers in the Rioja region of Spain – always reserve ahead of time and Sundays are a bad day!

The cellar, however, was fun. We found out that:

• the barrels cost a fortune
• silicon corks are fine for young wines that will stay a short amount of time in the bottle
• “tempranillo” is a kind of grape, not a word that means “young”
• experiments are made with different mixes of grapes, all the time
• everything is mechanical nowadays
• wine used to be cleaned from impurities with egg whites, of all things

There was so much wine it was mind blowing. So much.

We then tasted the wine. Honestly, I didn’t really like it.

Acidy taste is not something I go for in wine, and both the wines we tasted were slightly acidic. The woman who was showing us around even said that in white wines (which we weren’t tasting), people look for acidic taste but I’m not entirely sure that’s true. Why drink something acidic when you can drink something fruity and round and thick in taste?

No reason.