The train from Barcelona to Bilbao took 7 hours, most of it in the dark. We pulled into Bilbao after 9 p.m. and had dinner in the hotel at the fashionable hour of 10:20 p.m. The advantage of eating on Spanish time is that, with the six hour time difference, dinner at 10 feels, if anything, early.
Unfortunately, early was also when we had to wake up the next day for a 7:30 a.m. bus to Haro, something between a town and a village in the heart of the Rioja Alta winemaking country. An hour later we stumbled out of the bus, the sun having risen only a short time before. There was a cafeteria in the station. It was patronized by men, most of them small, some of them bus drivers. We decided to look for something more substantial.
We found another cafeteria a few blocks away. Again it was populated by men, small, and of a certain age. After two espressos and a tortilla (what we'd call a Spanish omelet), I began to wake up.
After getting turned around a few times on winding streets, we found the winery that Jack had chosen for the tour. He's fond of R. Lopez de Heredia's Vina Tondonia rioja's, aged far longer than most winemakers would find necessary, and weird-tasting enough for Jack to adore. It's one of the few wines I don't spit out, which doesn't mean I actually like the stuff; I just don't spit it out.
We were early, to I took pictures to pass the time.
Is there a day care center for the kids while mom and dad take a tour? Or are we going to have to sit on these?
The tour group consisted of me and Jack, a handful of New Zealanders (two who had qualified for the New York City Marathon and gotten there in time for its cancellation), and a few from the UK. We got lots of questions about the hurricane once we told them where, exactly, we were from.
This is the room where the wine first ferments.
Burlap covers the only window:
The winery, 130 years old, has been keeping harvest records. Grapes used to be picked at the end of November. This year the harvest was at the end of October. Only once before has it been earlier, in 2003, when a hot summer forced an early September harvest.
Two wine presses:
While the tour guide answered questions, I took pictures. I hang around Jack enough when he's talking wine that I have a pretty good idea of what's going on.
This winery has its own coopery -- its own barrel-makers. The guide led us in. Here, a barrel is being made from planks of oak imported from the U.S.
Old, wine-stained staves:
A cooper's tools:
An old barrel being repaired:
Deep in the cellars, barrels are stacked in a long hallway, a set of rails in the middle for moving the barrels:
The building was once a warehouse. Rail cars took loads from the river.
The Ebro (in English, "Raritan"):
Vina Tondonia, one of four pieces of land the vineyard owns:
Inside again, we were taken to the "cathedral," where the oldest bottles age. Mold -- Penicillium -- covering the bottles and hanging from the ceilings like cobwebs, is welcome here.
To eliminate sediment after the first fermentation, egg whites are added to the large vats. As the whites settle they take sediments with them. The winery used to have its own chicken coops.
Sediments are cleared again in a process called "barrel racking." Wine is poured from one barrel to the next, its clarity checked against a single light bulb as it passes through. The sediments stay in the first barrel and the second one is topped off. This is repeated several times as the wine ages.
Outside, metal rails aid rolling barrels:
Another winery:
Haro, Hollywood, same thing:
Close to 1 p.m., Jack and I were back in the center of town seemingly populated by men of a certain age, small, round, and unhurried.
A butcher, in a white butcher's coat, passed us, a slab of meat hoisted over his right shoulder.
We were looking for the wine museum. We found it, but it was closed.
At an outdoor cafe we had lunch. Jack ate octopus with potatoes while I faced a plate of pickled leeks. Then Jack had something meaty while I had goat cheese topped with tomato preserves. As we ate, more unhurried men passed by. One caught our attention especially, but he was too close to us for me to have pulled out my camera. He was dark-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, small, mustachioed, well-dressed, a suit jacket draped over his shoulders. He held the lapels as he sauntered past us, first uphill, then, ten minutes later, back down, still in the same pose.
We'd run out of town, so we sat in a park, where the sycamore trees, like the men, were small and round.
The vineyard is on the upper left side of this map. The town is on the right, and we pretty much walked all of it.
At the bus depot with more time to spare, there were a few things worth photographing.
Back in Bilbao, we wandered the old city, bought some chocolate, and ate dinner (more goat cheese for me) in a near-empty restaurant at the fashionable hour of 9 p.m. Museums were in tomorrow's plans,
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