Our first winery visit was to R. Lopez de Heredia, the oldest winery in Haro, dating from 1877. The tour was very interesting as they make their wine using traditional methods, firstly kept in large wooden vats, over a hundred years old, and then in aged barrels, no stainless steel is used. The style of wine making is to have little influence from the wood, but maintain fresh flavours through acids and tannins. They have their own cooperage on site, where they make new barrels as well as keeping the old vats repaired. The wine is only released after at least 4 years. There are extensive underground tunnels, excavated over a century ago where the barrels are stored. The workers on the excavations used to be given 4 litres of wine a day! The winemaking techniques in Rioja were refined by the French, who during the phylloxera outbreak sourced their wine from this region. Tempranillo is the main grape variety used, with some grenache and graciano. We are always interested to hear about grape harvesting techniques. They hand harvest generally in October and at the end of each row are placed cylindrical containers for the grape buckets to be emptied into. The grapes are transported in these containers (which they make in the cooperage) to minimise damage to the bunches. We tried 3 of their reds, all estate wines and high quality. The wines retain remarkable freshness for their age. Not expensive with the highest price being 23 euro for a 2004. In the tunnels are kept bottles of older vintages from particularly good years, which if offered to a collector to purchase fetch at least 2000 euro, just for one bottle!
We are staying in an apartment, so are self catering from the supermarket. The selection and low price of seafood is amazing. There seems to be more of it sold in the supermarket than meat.
No comments:
Post a Comment