Riojan Road Trip

the view from Laguardia

NOTE: I am coming down with a cold and I've noticed that my English is deteriorating (both in writing and in speech) so please forgive the lack of sentence variety and whatever else makes something easy to read. The pictures are the most important part, no?

Yesterday Jennis and I rented a car and drove through the northern part of La Rioja and the sourthern part of the Basque country where Riojan wine is produced. Our car was the smallest, greenest car I've every seen but very cute and wonderful for our purposes. Jennis is an excellent stickshift driver (no one here uses automatics) and parallel parker. And our timing was perfect: the day was absolutely beautiful after almost two weeks of rain in La Rioja, and the leaves of the vines have changed colors. We spent most of the day without plans just driving from one pueblo to the next, trying to find the best view and occassionally something to eat. Our only plan was to meet Rosa, the vice principle at one of my schools and the woman who has been taking care of everything I need since June, at the pueblo where she grew up to see her family's bodega.

We started our morning in Laguardia, which is part of the Basque Country and had a beautiful view. We spotted a town nearby while overlooking the vineyards and decided to drive there. The town was called Elvillar and the roads to get there were indulgent almost-switchbacks through vineyards. We walked around a bit before heading for El Ciego, where Frank Ghery designed a bodega/hotel for Marques de Riscal. I wasn't impressed by his work there; it looked like the Guggenheim only some of the metal was bright purple (for grapes?) and you can see too much of the building that isn't covered in metal waves. Plus, our requests for a tour were rejected--apparently you have to make reservations in advance. So we drove closer into the town of El Ciego where we ate a tapa at a bar where they gawked silently at our English speaking and then we stopped at an Enoteca for a glass of wine. It was a most enjoyable experience and we stood outside with the other 20 people who were having midday glasses in the sun. Jennis spotted a really pretty group of vines growing on some cube structure where we parked out car too.

first: a park in Laguardia
second: approaching Elvillar
third: on the road
fourth: vines in the parking lot, El Ciego

After El Ciego, we drove to Cenicero (which means "ashtray" in Spanish). We couldn't find lunch there and it wasn't as pretty as expected so we moved on to Briones, a mideival town that everyone has said was so pretty. It was absolutely gorgeous and we were able to go inside the cathedral. I'll have to go back because we couldn't spend enough time there; we were meeting Rosa in Rodezno, her pueblo, around 4:00 pm and we only arrived in Briones at 3:00.

first: a bull on the highway
second: the cathedral in Briones
third: inside the cathedral
fourth: more Briones

So after walking around for an hour, we drove to Rodezno, where Rosa picked us up at the cathedral. She drove us a kilometer or so out of town to a hill where families own small bodegas. These bodegas are comparable to lake houses: a second home where families get together for meals and make wine in small amounts for friends and families. Rosa's mother and sister-and-law were at the bodega, which had a dining room with a long table and a fire place, and wine cellar. We ate some cod cooked Riojan style and some chorrizo and tried the wine that they make there. It was Rosa's mother's birthday so we also enjoyed coffee and champagne and some small pastries. Rosa and her family were so welcoming and they showed us how they make wine there and we sat and talked by the fire and enjoyed the view from the bodega. Kelly, another American who studied abroad in Logrono a few years ago and moved back last year, met us at the bodega along with her Spanish boyfriend, Jorge. Rosa took us for a walk up the hill of bodegas to a field of grape vines which is actually now owned by a huge bodega that everyone in Rodezno opposes. Then we visited her sister-in-law's bodega that is bigger and has a hundreds of year old wooden barrel for wine storage that they don't use anymore.

After that, Rosa drove Jennis, Jorge, Kelly, and I down the hill to Rodezno proper and we visited the cathedral as everyone was leaving mass. An older Spanish woman explained a story about Eric the Belgian, a very famous relic theif from the 1960s who robbed several Spanish churches of priceless objects and then later "repented" and charged them to return the relics. Apparently he had stolen something from the church in Rodezno as well, I can't remember what though.

We said our goodbyes to Rosa, and then followed Jorge and Kelly to Haro, a famous wine town in La Rioja, for tapas. It was fun there but our first tapa filled us up and it was getting cold, so Jennis and I returned to Lorgono within an hour.

Rosa and me

Rosa's mother and Jennis

the view from Rosa's bodega

inside the bodega

Rosa explaining how they make the wine

fermenting wine

Rodezno from the bodega

Jorge, Rosa, Jennis, and Kelly walking uphill

vines at night

People eat white asparagus here and it's disgusting. This is some "white asparagus" made of chocolate which might actually be grosser than the real thing. We found it in the window of a candy store in Haro.