Yesterday, I skipped class to drink wine.
Due to past actions as well as the fact that I am only a recent college graduate, I feel the need to clarify that statement: I skipped class, not to sit in my room alone with a bottle and a Dixie cup, but to accompany some friends on a trek through La Rioja, the wine region two hours away from San Sebastian.
I had been to la Rioja once before–five of us packed into a car that didn’t quite seat five, no matter what the car rental people said. We drove down the highway listening to a kitchy Swiss German cover band, slowly watching as the scenery changed from grey and drab as it so often is in San Sebastian to blue skied greenery and sweet, small towns with names that were difficult to remember.
Our first stop was Santo Domingo de la Calzada, where we visited the Ermita de la Virgen de la Plata, a sweet little church overlooking an even sweeter little square.
These peppers hung in the windows of nearly every home, and I found myself, as I often have in the past seven-odd years of finding romance in the day to day normalcy of other people, wishing that my normal involved plucking red chiles off the wall before making dinner.
As you can tell, I snapped pictures of everything, wandering the town in awe, not knowing what to expect, and therefore expecting nothing, a turn around every corner a surprise and an adventure. I loved everything, refraining from exlaiming over red-bordered windows and Gothic architecture, unsure of what the four other people would think of my tendency to wax poetic over the mundane.
After a coffee to warm ourselves up–regardless of what the blue skies and sunshine may convey, it was quite cold on that day back at the beginning of October–we piled back into the car and drove further out, out into the countryside, into the greenery, and I saw a familiar sight.
Vines.
The first vines I remember seeing were in Paziols, chaotic and wild and everywhere. In Paziols, vines are so common and land so expensive that it’s not unusual to see abandoned pieds de vigne, green branches growing willy-nilly wherever they may please. This was so different, so ordered. I couldn’t rip myself away from the window.
Which may have been why, when I saw this strange pink structure, I was a little stunned. Never mind that it’s ultra famous, a hotel designed by Frank Gehry of Guggenheim fame. Never mind that the building is home to a famous hotel and an even more famous bodega–all I could think of as I stared at it was, ¨That doesn’t belong here.¨
We parked the car in front of it anyway, getting out to stroll around the park that lies below the hotel, which sits, untouchable, upon a hill behind a gate. Serious-looking guards–the only things I’ve ever seen the Spanish get serious about are food, wine and football–informed us that there was no way we would even see the hotel, restaurant or bodega without a reservation.
Opened to the public is the wine shop, which we visited, if only to take pictures of the bottles, standing in rows and reminding me more of the American view of wine, as something highbrow and only for the upper crust, than the Spanish view. I’ve gotten used to drinking my tinto from a large glass that looks like the ones we use for tap water at home, but the prices here (upwards of 400 euros for some bottles) reminded me that wine is not always a daily splurge.
We got back in the car to see the building from another angle, and while I had to admit it was interesting, I was much more intrigued by the old structures, the ones that had been there for years, crawling with ivy and stories.
I guess I’m old-fashioned that way. And for the record, I also prefer my wine in a glass I can wrap two hands around, as I’ve gotten used to drinking it over the course of my nine weeks here.
We abandoned the hotel Marques de Riscal and the town of Elciego–I love the name of the town, if nothing else, which means “the blind”–for the road, more snapshots, more sky.
We finally found where we were headed–LaGuardia–although we passed through Cenicero just to be able to see what a town called “ashtray” would look like. For the record, I’ve seen many towns with prettier names that were nowhere near as sweet.
LaGuardia is one of those walled towns up on a hill that seemed so sweet and cute the first time I saw one, and now, tens of cute, little European towns later, I’ve started to take for granted.
I should never take something like this for granted.
We wandered the town, stopping in little parks and even more churches, and I found myself whipping out the little Moleskine that has become more a part of me than anything else ever has, scribbling notes and no longer caring whether my travel companions found me ridiculous for loving everything I saw.
I loved a metal sculpture of shoes, which even had a pair like the ones I used to clomp around in in high school.
I loved a gazebo made of glass that reminded me of the one from The Sound of Music, which made me want to dance around and sing with a 17-year old telegram messenger-turned-Nazi youth (if you haven’t seen the film… no, I’m not a Nazi. I just like Rolf.)
I loved the playground we found, where we played like children for a few minutes before loading ourselves back in the car and moving forward, to Logroño.
Of all the places we saw, Logroño was the largest city: we walked around the entire thing, up and down the river that split it in two.
And when we couldn’t walk anymore, we got yet another cup of coffee at a café, watching as several tables of Basque men in berets sang to one another and drank glass after glass of wine.
Oh… wine. Right. Tha’s why we were there, wasn’t it? Hard to say… you see, what we were unaware of before piling into the car that morning was that wine in all of la Rioja, and not just at the exclusive Marques de Riscal, is a highbrow affair, something that you plan ahead for, calling to reserve one of the coveted places at a bodega tasting.
Which brings me to cutting class yesterday.
One of the good things about finally having a blog I can be proud of is giving out the address to random people. I know that many of them will probably never type the URL into their browser… I am in the minority that craves reading things that people I know have written. I feel like I’m peering into their souls. On the rare occasion that I stumble upon someone like-minded, I feel an instant bond: they cite me to myself the next day, exclaiming over pictures, and they tend to introduce me to anyone and everyone they know who has even the slightest interest in food. Which is how I met Jon and Nicole, the English couple I ate cake with a few weeks back.
Jon runs a company here in San Sebastian called San Sebastian Food. The minute he described it to me, I fell in love with the idea–we’ve moved past cellophane wrapped, labelled, translated, packaged tourism experiences and moved into the nitty gritty: what Jon offers is the proverbial “real thing,” gastronomic experiences in San Sebastian that he discovered as a tourist himself, integrating with locals, pointing and asking, “What is that?”
Luckily, his company is still in the development phase. I say luckily, because if it wasn’t, there’s no way I would have been wandering through the murky darkness of an underground wine cave at 10 in the morning yesterday, doing a “test run” of the sort of experience he hopes to offer to clients.
As we drive through what I had thought would be familiar terrain, I am stunned by the differences between this and what I saw just a few short weeks ago: the expanse of green vines have turned so red and orange that I no longer crave apple picking and New England fall–from now on, this color, so bright it looks like a painting, will be fall for me.
What strikes me most, though, is the smell: we don’t even crack the windows, but the second we cross into the estacion neighborhood, the entire town smells as though it’s been steeped in wine.
We visit the Bodega Bilbainas, where a fellow Brit shows us around: he tells us all about wine–from the history of this particular bodega (founded in 1859 by French winemakers) to the process of making it, from the cost to the grape selection to the bottles they sell here–mostly Crianzas, like in most of the region.
We visit old caves and new caves and see thousand of barrels–over 170 000. They smell damp and warm and cool and old all at the same time and remind me of seaside houses after a cold August storm, before the fall rolls in.
The bodega seems to be a massive maze of buildings that never ends; every time we leave a room, there seems to be another, another huge line of barrels, another distinct smell. My favorite, oddly enough, is the oldest room where they store the ancient oak barrels that hold the cheapest of their wine–the smell is a slap in the face, sweet, like honey or molasses, which I wouldn’t expect. The alcoholic acidity I’m used to is nowhere.
The rain lets up, and we take advantage of a moment of blue sky to tour the vineyards, my sneakers getting stuck in the mud and releasing every step with a satisfying smack. We taste the grapes left hanging on the branches, the ones that grew too late for the harvest: I remember eating the barely-sweet Muscat grapes, just a hint of the sugar that would turn them into the syrupy dessert wine in the background, so I’m completely unprepared for what explodes in my mouth–sweeter than any table grape but with a complexity I can’t fathom. I have to restrain myself from plopping down in the mud and eating them by the handful.
Instead, I take more pictures–of witchlike, barren trees, bright blue skies and fields of wine on fire with autumn. I’m struck by the realization that this is the true definition of the now-clichéd expression unreal.
It’s almost enough to make you forget about the tasting.
Almost.
We sit at a round table set for six, five glasses apiece and fancy jars for spitting, which I do not do. Instead, I drink and listen as the five wines are described: the first is a Viña Pomel, a 100-year old brand that is everything Rioja is meant to be–acidic and young, mid-weight with an oaky background and a long finish. The important thing, I’m told, is the balance between red fruit and oak. “You can’t tell where one stops and the other begins,” our guide tells us, before laughing and calling it “a breakfast wine.”
This is the best part, after all: even our guide admits he’s no good with tasting terminology, with telling people what to smell.
“After about 15 years, they all taste the same,” he tells us as we sip a 1991 Poma Reserva, nearly brick red in color, smooth and strange, like sherry wine without the sweetness or acidity or bang of alcohol. Some at the table don’t like it, but I find myself contemplating the sheer absence, the fact that I can’t put my finger on what it does taste like, only what it doesn’t.
Of course, that could be the wine talking.
I jot down the name of my favorite–the Viclanda Reserva 2004–before hopping back in the car with a bottle of red in a burgundy bag and riding off into the vines, towards a mid-morning cortado and tortilla con pimiento picante at a little spot Jon knows.
Our next stop is the exact opposite of everything we’ve just seen: where the first bodega was ancient and full of history, this one is new and modern with a custom-built building that allows for the wine to be made without pumps: gravity allows the seven floors to help in the actual making of the wine.
I take notes like a good student and learn quite a bit–about which wines use oak and which don’t, about whether to include the stems or to remove them, about the conversion of malic acid to lactic acid… but the science of it doesn’t speak to me nearly as much as the views from the building do.
And, of course, the tasting, which features two wines–one white that has the body and heft of a Muscat and the delicate taste of a Chardonnay and a red that goes down easy and smooth. To accompany them, we eat smoked salmon with dill and corn and a plateful of Spanish chorizo.
As we drive back home through the vines, to the real world: my suitcase I need to pack, my deadlines looming, my train ticket I’ve lost somewhere in the organized (?) chaos that is my desk, I can’t help but think that this–this local knowledge, this ease and flow and adventure all rolled into one big surprise… this is why I haven’t moved home for a real job, even if my bank account demands it.
In case any of you were still wondering.
