After we were finished touring the palace in Olite, we boarded the bus and headed out into wine country. The winery is located in Navarre near the banks of the Arga river and near the Sarvil and El Perdon mountains. The winery and vineyards are part of a large estate that has been in the wine making business since the 1500's. Though we don't drink, we found the tour very interesting. The other people in our group enjoyed a wine tasting after our tour and then we all had dinner (more on that later).
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| When you enter the winery, you do so in a restored building. Everything there is totally classy. It's immaculately clean. There is some serious sculpture and art---the owners believe in a beautiful setting to enjoy their "wonderful wine". In that building, they show you some of the things they used to use in making wine. |
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| This is where they used to store the wine. |
We left this building and walked underground to a huge facility which is much newer and has state-of-the-art stainless steel vats and all the bells and whistles to prepare the wine before it goes into new French oak casks and is stored here (2,000 barrels of it):
Just steps up from this huge cavern are two large reception areas which are glassed in so that you can see into the winery proper. Our group had the wine tasting in one while DJ, Brian, Jaime, and I visited in the other room. Then they all came in where we were seated at beautifully set dinner tables and served dinner.
This was the menu:
Warm surimi elver salad (surimi is processed fish pieces formed to make imitation whatever/elver is baby
eel---can I just say they looked like little white worms)
Fresh haricot beans (like big lima beans)
Duck confit (duck that is salted, cooked and preserved in its own fat)
Junket sorbet (tasted like warm, melted ice cream that wasn't very sweet---totally a liquid)
Coffee
Pacharan liqueur
Guess how much I had to eat? We were starving. We hadn't had lunch, and this dinner was probably more like a late lunch at 3 or 4 in the afternoon. I picked out the fake baby eel, and ate the rest of the salad. I ate the beans and drank most of the sorbet just because I was so hungry! DJ was brave and ate the duck. I've had duck before and didn't enjoy it. This was at least my fifth negative experience with Spanish food. Let's just say, I'm not a fan. First the tapas, then almost raw roast beef at the hotel, an even more rare hamburger at the mall, and a variety of weird things the night before at dinner (the filet was good, but you should have seen DJ's fish---yikes!). I know, I know, I'm a big baby, but even DJ who will try things a little more willingly, didn't care for a lot of it. Anyway, our counterparts were drinking wine by the bottles and were a bunch of happy campers.
After dinner, we had time to go outside and visit the vineyards:
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| Hate this picture of us. It looks like part of our legs and feet are missing, but the reason I include it is because back in the day a rosebush was planted at the head of each row of grapes. The roses were much faster than the grapes to show that something was amiss---bugs, disease, or whatever; so the master of the vineyard would know there was a problem if the roses didn't look good. That way they could try to rememdy the problem before they lost the grapes. Nowadays, they have knowledge and technology that keeps them abreast of any problems, but the rose thing is a tradition they still practice. |
I've never seen such teeny, tiny grapes on the vine like this before---kind of cute:
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| I took this picture to show you the fields and fields of sunflowers. I guess they grow well there like the grapes! Because I took the picture while the bus was moving and because the heads of the flowers weren't facing me, the photo was pretty much a bust, but would you look at that horizon??!! Looks just like a painting. |
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