Bodega visits

On our way into Laguardia we stopped to see the winery of Marques de Riscal, which is one of the biggest and most famous Rioja names. The estate is huge and I guess hadn't suffered much from Spain's economic problems as it is beautifully maintained and has built a splendid new hotel and restaurant designed by Frank Gehry of the Bilbao Guggenheim museum fame. The building has become a tourist attraction in itself and well worth a visit. In the car park we came across a vintage Bentley on a British Bentley owners club tour of Spain and Portugal. Later in the day, in Laguardia, we went to tour the opposite size bodega. In the town of Laguardia itself, the bodega of Carlos San Pedro is family owned and operated by just seven people, with casual labour help, producing only 50,000 bottles a year. All the houses in Laguardia, including our hotel, have dug caves and tunnels down into the rock underneath them, and the bodega still uses theirs for wine making and storage. We tasted three wines there, a 2014 crianza, a 2010 reserva and a 2009 grand crianza which were all really good, and the best, the grand crianza superb.Read more