18th May 2018 by emmadurnford

18th May 2018

Normally breakfast is served from 9.00am onwards at this very civilised hotel but unfortunately we had to ask for an 8.00am breakfast as we had an important appointment at 10.30am - at our all time favourite vineyard - Campo Viejo which I discovered some time ago was only an hour or so away from where we are staying. The vineyard is just North East of the unimpressive town of Logrono but once we had arrived, we had no sense of being near a town. The bodega looked quite small from the outside but all was explained on the excellent tour as the bodega and it’s vats, bottling room and cask room are spread over three floors under ground. The tour was fascinating and I never thought that I would see 30 million (yes really) bottles of wine all together. This is a view across just a very small proportion of the wine being aged in casks made of French and American oak.

After the tour we were treated to a wine tasting with snacks of chorizo, salami and breadsticks along with not three as promised but four of the top wines that come out of the Bodega including a white Rioja that is not sold outside of Spain. Delicious and even better, as I had driven to the Bodega, Colin was on driving duty afterwards so I could finish each glass!

Afterwards we headed back into Logrono giving a Taiwanese woman on our tasting tour a lift as she had asked the 5kms all the way there in the heat of the day. Not being very impressed with the town we drove on to Laguardia, a pretty little town in the hills surrounded by little fields of vines as far as the eye can see. We enjoyed a coffee (to sober up) had a wander and then drove onto another little town - not so picturesque and definitely not so easy to park in. We looked at the Marques de Riscal bodega, a cutting edge architect-designed building by Frank Gehry who designed the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. Impressive but in my opinion quite out of place next to the traditional little town of Elciego.

After all of this we headed back stopping at Ezcaray a few kms from where we are staying to suss out a place to eat later - the tapas bar Masip was selected and we had a great (if not slightly too over indulgent meal) of tapas later on.

(7,933 footsteps)
Leave a Comment
Sign up for a free account or Sign in to post a comment.