Wining in Rioja

Earlier this month I found myself on the Camino de Santiago again, having lured my mother to Spain with promises of a wine tour in La Rioja. We started in lovely Laguardia, a fortified town situated on a rise that is dwarfed by the Cantabrias beyond. Staying inside the city walls takes one back to the times when the sparsely populated fiefdoms of Spain were fiercely but so often unsuccessfully defended. Laguardia is notable for its extensive series of cuevas, excavated chambers below the city that originally served as an underground defensive network but was converted into wineries when wine-making became popular several hundred years ago. The most impressive tour, by Bodegas Carlos San Pedro Pérez de Viñaspre, takes one down into the cuevas where a joven red is still made in huge tanks, in the style of several centuries past. I could write several pages on all that I learned about the fascinating process of enology, but will limit myself to saying that the wineries we saw ranged from fully modern to Bodegas Muga, in Haro, known for remaining faithful to its founder — the first in the region over a century ago to produce finer quality wines (crianzas, á la francais), as opposed to the hearty peasant jovenes which still clearly are a strong local tradition. The massive oak vats containing tens of thousands of liters of wines are a sight to behold (look for a man standing on top of the second vat).

Aside from wine, the tour was notable for the number of simply amazing cathedrals, abbeys and cloisters that we saw. My best move was to book a room at the Hostería housed in a modernized wing of the Monasterio de Yuso in tiny San Millán. We saw damage done by Napoleon’s troops — here, they built fires on the tiled passageways of the monastery, damage that is still visible today. Up the hill is a place that sent shivers through me — Saint Millán was supposed to have lived from the mid-fourth to mid-fifth century, and the tiny Suso monastery represents three successive periods — Visigothic, Mozarabic and Romanesque — which are all clearly visible in the architecture. While the saint was living, however, there were only a series of caves, one of which is marked as the site he used to flagellate himself. In the photo, his tomb is visible in the most ancient part, a cave which has been built out in two phases as evidenced by the two different arches. I have to say, as a Catholic, it just doesn’t get any better than this.

As I walked a side spur of the Camino de Santiago that passes by Suso, newly inspired, I contemplated the possibility of doing the entire trail by bike. But when I returned to Madrid, S. mentioned casually that she wants to do the last 100 km or so by foot. I immediately signed on to join her. If all goes well, by the end of next month I’ll have earned the right to expiate a sin. Now, if I could only decide which to choose…

[Best wines tasted: Viña Tondonia 1990 Reserva (white) by R. López de Heredia (Haro) and Faustino V 2004 Reserva (red) from Bodegas Faustino (La Guardia).]