In order to ensure that my summer in Spain was not completely devoid of some cultural experiences, my folks signed me up for a two-day excursion to Spanish wine country last weekend—more specifically, to the small town of Logroño in the La Rioja region. I must say it was the classiest I've felt in Spain yet and recommend the experience to anyone looking for a weekend trip from Madrid.
Now the bus ride ain't bad (four hours long) and you're seeing gorgeous Spanish countryside the entire trip there. A roundtrip ticket goes for about 16 euros with the PLM bus system. The city has a quieter feel to it than the hustle and bustle of Madrid, allowing travelers to focus on the Western-tinted beauty of Logroño; apartments feature Islamic-inspired architecture while several older gentlemen walk around the plaza wearing traditional Moroccan kaftans.
Our first vineyard was the Bodegas Rioja Marques de Arviza, the second oldest vineyard in the La Rioja region. A producer of only three varieties of wine (Crianza, Reserva, and "Tractor"), Marques de Arviza is a small, family-owned vineyard that prizes itself on its carefully hand-crafted wine, created with strict adherence to detail and the tradition of the Logroño region.
While the vineyard does use modern technology, what sets Marques de Arviza apart are the stone-built tunnels that span for considerable distances underneath the tasting rooms.
Imagine getting lost in tunnels like these. You'd be able to survive on wine for at least of couple of days... not the worst of fates.
Instead of storing their wines in digitally temperature-controlled rooms like many modern vineyards, the Marques de Arviza family allows their wine to mature in their underground cellars as their ancestors did years before them. The vineyard even utilizes an old "elevator," comprised of a metal cage, pulleys, and chains.
Keeping it old school.
After touring the lowly-lit, romantic caves beneath the vineyard, we were led to the wine tasting—what we'd all been itching for. However, before we could attempt to pry open the nearest case of red, we received a lesson in wines and wine tasting. Here's the condensed version:
1. Sight: Hold your glass up to light or a clean, white surface to inspect the color and consistency of the wine. If you look closely, you will see that your "red" wine, in fact, has some undertones. If the base color to your wine is orangey, it is likely to be a young wine, no older than a year or two. However, if the color has more brown hues, the wine you're drinking is at least three years old.
2. Smell: Swirl the wine around your glass (yes, like those pretentious hoity-toity wine connoisseurs) to "open up" the wine and allow it to breathe. When you smell the "bouquet" of the wine (the top notes you get when pushing your nose into your wine glass), deeper flavors like coffee, spice, or licorice are the result of storing the wine in American oak barrels to mature, while floral and sweet scents are due to French oak barrels.
Barrels made of French and American oak.
3. Taste: My favorite step. Keep the wine on your palette for a while to get the "body" of the wine. That bitter-sour flavor that's making you pucker? It's called "tannin," and it comes from the skins of grapes. The older the wine, the longer it has been steeped in grape skins and the more tannin the wine has. Wine snobs love the stuff. I do not, but everyone has their own preferences.
Whether you're a die-hard wine fanatic or only starting out in your wine-tasting career, Logroño is a weekend trip to take from Madrid for the sake of the town, the wine country, and the change of pace from the busy city life.