Wine Tasting!!!
Tuesday was a day that I was VERY excited about because after my language related snafu last year in France realizing we were nearly 40 miles away from the Chateau I’d actually booked we made the executive decision to book a guided wine tour. We arrived at the restaurant that our tour was set to depart from, well fed from the Riu breakfast…which was kind of a bummer because the food at this place looked good. Our group had about 15 folks, all of whom were very nice, and hailed from different parts of North America as our tour was in English (obviously). I recall talking to folks from Boston, Canada, California, Minnesota, and Texas. An interesting aside, the Bostonians asked if we knew about a winery in Oregon her brother had worked at…turns out I’d done some photography work for them a few years back. Small world, right?
Anyhow, after roughly 45 minutes on the bus we ended up in the small town of Belmonte de Tajo where we got a tour of the vines of Bodegas Andres Morate and met their head of marketing, Marta (assuming my notes are accurate). They’re the 1st ecological winery in the Madrid region. It’s a family owned place growing on 20 hectares spread over 24 plots. They trim their plants short to retain humidity for the 80 plus year old vines as they don't use irrigation. An interesting fact is that some of the roots go as deep as 15 meters, WILD! Morate grows Airén, Muscadelle, Malbec, Malvar, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Tempranillo. I also learned they utilize the process of remontage (French word) which is pumping over the juice while fermenting and utilize cold water circulating around the tanks to keep temps between 25 and 28 celsius in their stainless steel tanks. SCIENCE!!!
We left the field a few moments later to get back on the bus for a short ride to the tasting room/winery. It’s a pretty unassuming building in a rather non-descript area not all that dissimilar from some areas here in the PNW. We sampled 4 wines with some (not so) small appetizers and their white and Tempranillo were AMAZING!!!! So much so that we shipped half a case home to the tune of nearly 120 € (which was a bummer cause the wine was only 5€ per). I think we could have spent much more time here and been very happy with it as the vibe was very relaxing and the wines were quite good.
Back on the bus...
Leaving Morate our group headed for Chinchón to visit Bodega del Nero which is a 5th generation winery that was established in the 1870s. This particular winery occupies 40 hectares around Chinchón, where most of the soils are clay, sandy, or alluvial. Bodega del Nero, unlike Morate, uses trail/wire irrigation. Here we had some amazing snacks in addition to some fabulous wines and our host was pouring pretty heavy samples so by the time we got back on the bus we were all pretty jovial.
Our last stop for the day was Bodegas Jesús Díaz E Hijos in Colmenar de Oreja. Bodegas Jesús Díaz, like del Nero, has been around a long time-in this case since 1898. Antonio is their winemaker and he’s 4th generation. Very cool stuff. The wines here were pretty good-though I think Morate was my favorite. The highlight at Diaz was definitely the tour where we got to go underground and see where they age their wines. After the cavern tour we were treated to a display of sparkling wine opened with a saber and another great spread of appetizers for us to munch on.
This was such a great outing, we met some amazing people (including our tour guide Alberto-message me if you want his info), ate some incredible Spanish food, and tasted some beautiful wines. I couldn’t recommend this outing more highly. Hell, we’d come back to Spain just for the wine tasting…and probably will.
