We got up at 6 in the hope of catching a beautiful sunrise over the mountains. There was a lot of mist, but it cleared enough for us to get some photos. We then had a bowl of cereal! 😃
Dave here, please excuse the excess of photos but it was out first sunrise for a while!
As a result of getting up so early and our next stop being a mere 8km drive, we were set up in the Area de Autocaravanas Elciego by 8a.m. This campervan park has electricity and we were keen to have a morning cuppa! (Our gas isn’t working!) I went to a nearby wine shop to get the tokens and we hooked up to power! It’s a lovely place to park and only 2 euros for 12 hours of electricity. there were quite a few other vans and caravans already parked up and it had capacity for 14.
Elciego has become famous in recent years due to the Marqués de Riscal Winery and the hotel that was designed by the Canadian architect Frank Gehry. Like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the hotel is covered by titanium. However, this time the titanium contains some pink and gold tones in addition to its natural silver tone. The color palette is based on the wine and the bottles from Marqués de Riscal: pink for the wine, gold for the metal net that covers the Reserva bottle, and silver for the foil around the cork. Other parts of the hotel are built from sandstone, which reflects the style of the local architecture.
We wandered around the village, stopped for a coffee and freshly cooked tortilla. We enjoyed the contrast of the modern building set against the backdrop of a traditional village. We had a good look around the village, went into the Hermitage of our lady of La Plaza by the main square which was built in the late Middle Ages, 1763 to 65. The central altarpiece was baroque in style and designed by Sebastián de Oyarzábal. We then bought some bread and cake in a gorgeous little baker’s shop and headed back to the van. We couldn’t get into the larger church as entry was by pre-arranged tour via the tourist office only.
We chilled in the van for a while and then went back into the town for a Spanish lunch in Restaurante La Florida. It was a nice dining room, very friendly and a good price. The meal consisted of salad and beef cheek for me and rice with eels followed by peppers stuffed with cod for Dave.
From there, we walked to our pre-booked tour of the Marques de Riscal vineyard at 3.30. This one was in English too. There were a lot of similarities with the other tour, so here are a few things which were different:
1. The hotel by the vineyard was designed by Frank Gehry who also designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
2. It was better value – yesterday’s tour was €35, with two wines, but today’s was €20 and we got to taste three wines.
3. There was a difference in how the wine was produced. Ysios wine is (quite atypically) generally not crushed, whereas Marques de Riscal is. The latter is fermented twice, once after the solids are removed.
4. This one operates on a much larger scale, producing 6 million bottles a year here of reds and rosés. A further 4 million bottles of white are produced at their other vineyard near Valladolid.
5. The BotellerÃa room here houses all their wines ever produced since 1862.
6. 65% of the wine is exported. The two main destinations are America and Mexico.
We really enjoyed the wine tasting. We did notice, however, that quite a few people were leaving quite a bit of their wine. It was our instinct to knock it all back, ha ha! Strangely, even though we knew none of the other people and knew we would probably never seen them again, we started to feel slightly self-conscious. 🤣 We opted to finish the best of the three, the Reserva, as there wasn’t really long enough to drink them all. What a terrible waste!!
Word of the day:
Cenicero = ashtray (there is a place near here of this name. We could not believe that there is a place called ashtray. 🤣😲)
Here’s some extra info about Tempranillo grapes – and tobacco! https://timatkin.com/cork-talk/tempranillo/
What concoctions of food you have, eels etc.
Give me bread and cake any day of the week.