wine country

i write this in bed, wrapped tightly in my cheap throw blanket and newly-found sobriety. three “house of cards” episodes and one batch of scrambled eggs later, i am now prepared to make my initial comments on my recent excursion to la rioja and, coincidentally, the basque country.

first, a bit of context: anna and i were a bit tired of traversing the same plains of wintry madrid (though to be realistic i tend to tire of most anything when it appears cold and dead) and figured that one of the best ways to combat that was a good kidney and liver workout courtesy of spanish wine country. i booked the tickets, she booked the room (think spanish embassy suites minus the complimentary breakfast and you’re set) and we booked it to logroño, laguardia and elciego, spain (though pending your politics, the latter is part of the basque country) for around 48 hours of tasting wine and traipsing around vineyards pretending to be freelance sommeliers.

it was well worth it, and not just because of what i was about to see but also due to what i wasn’t. siddhi had two “friends” visiting (though when i greeted them they had to be reminded of her name; apparently their relationship transcends common identifiers used by us non-212 area code plebes) whose idea of a “chill” afternoon was listening to “trance step” while lauding themselves on how, thanks to some major clubs, immune they are to roofies. let’s just say i wanted to take a club of a different kind to their heads.

anyway, made it to avenida de america bus station around 4:00 (the place could have only been worse if they served just pepsi products) and we set out north. knowing it would be a four-hour trek, we brought snacks. anna in charge of the savory; and ironically me responsible for all things sweet. we also brought wine, which i suppose isn’t exactly apropos for a bus trip, but neither was their in-transit entertainment (re: "cars 2" en español) so i’m pleased i took to my own devices.

a bottle of wine, a baguette and a wedge of brie later, we stumbled from the bus station to our spanish best western, soaking in all the alcohol from the wine bars we passed along the way by proxy. unfortunately for us, the receptionist extracted whatever buzz of good tidings we might have caught along the way with either her dyspeptic personality or pepto bismol-colored lipstick. either way, not exactly welcoming. after dealing with that, we dropped our things off (though first we basked in the superficial luxury of having a TV by watching--or rather looking at since watching implies basic understanding of what you’re seeing--one of those stupid adult cartoons in german...still don't understand why only german shows were featured in a spanish-speaking country) and headed to laurel street, which is known for its great wine bars and even better pinchos (pintxos if you’re basque).

i was in love the second i heard the first vibrato-ed violin chord. string quartets draped every street corner, their sound only muffled by tiny old women in floor-length fur coats (unnecessary for the weather but extra fabulous for the soul) stopping to place change in their cases or--as was more often the case--to throw their hands in the air and mutter to their friends that the symphony does bach way better. obviously in exceptional company. made our way into the first bar and, while taking out a ten-euro note to pay for two glasses of wine and two pinchos (one was this fantastic goat cheese and ham stuffed artichoke; the other some kind of seafood and bell pepper fritter served with ali oli sauce and manchego cheese....enough to make even ina garten swoon), nearly swooned myself at the negligible damage: 3.50 euro.

??????

!!!!!!!!!

In Madrid, this would have cost me at least three times as much. which obviously meant that you could make the logical case for repeating this scenario at least twice more in one night. and i did. i think.

woke the next morning at around 9 so i could throw some clothes on (well, realistically swan and preen a bit longer than usual since we had made the pact that this was to be a weekend of glamour and decadence), walk to the bus station and make our way to laguardia, a medieval walled city, and elciego, a small town in the basque country, for wine tastings.

as a result of shitty bus schedules, we weren’t able to make our first vineyard tour in laguardia, so instead we tooled around for a couple hours in the village, marveling at their jesus menageries (really though -- think cabbage patch apostles in medium-sized aquariums hanging above plazas) and their absolutely over-the-top pinchos. we wandered around the town for a bit trying our hardest to enter at least ONE ancient cathedral, though it turns out even god sleeps in on saturdays and our good intentions were met with locked doors. no matter, though; the wine bars we passed en route to redemption were already open and always offered its patrons a sanctuary for a different kind of salvation. found one that alleged it was “irish”, though their options begged to differ: every spanish wine you could imagine, they had, and their pinchos consisted of bizarre seafood concoctions familiar only to spanish tastebuds. i had the tempura octopus mixed with garlic mashed potatoes and another rice and octopus dish--this time grilled and seasoned with its own ink--both of which were absolutely divine. was poured two glasses of some 1998 crianza and, my god, i have never felt more like paul giamatti in all my life in terms of girth and wine appreciation. 

anyway, the time quickly came for the next stop on our trip: elciego. walked down the hill to the bus stop (though at this point i would have been fine with putting my hands over my face and rolling) which was little more than a patch of gravel on the side of a two-lane road. were greeted by a bus driver who was either severely hungover or simply an extra from “creature from the black lagoon”. along with our enthusiasm, he begrudgingly took our tickets and ushered us to our seats. made the 20-minute jaunt and were soon transplanted into the basque country whose euskara (basque language) written signs weren’t of much service in terms of finding a bathroom. but c’est la vie. or in euskara, keptxsa bhr bexthrophkxa. or something like that.

the grounds of elciego serve as canvas to one of renown architect frank gehry’s most impressive works, and that was precisely the reason we were there...if not the only reason the town is still there at all. the village itself was quaint (around 1,000 people--half of whom i think we saw in the same wine bar) and quiet; so much so that anna and i were able to successfully trespass twice without anyone saying a word. the first was on someone’s rooftop (though in our defense we couldn’t tell if the building next to it was residential or even, for that matter, occupied) so that we could take in gehry’s design from afar, and the next was this dilapidated building on a hill whose roof had been blown off during what we determined to be the spanish civil war. that site was a bit dangerous since it was elevated, missing parts of its flooring and several stories tall and i was wearing heels, but hey, i’m writing this from madrid, aren’t i? the sights were absolutely lovely.

from there, we made our pilgrimage to the famed bodega by foot (yes, reading that phrase over i realize how it comes across and i don’t care), though i think we were probably the only people whose visit was made courtesy of feet and public transpo as opposed to BMWs. waited for the other guests on the tour to arrive while noshing on sheep cheese, chorizo and red wine (price tag: five euro), making sure to camouflage our wine cheeks properly. 

the tour commenced, and as was to be expected anna and i were the only people there who didn’t qualify for an AARP membership or at the very least serve as a walking crest whitestrips advertisement. in short, we were surrounded by wasps. our guide showed us around the facilities, allowing us to marvel at the gehry (he based the colors off the vineyard's wine bottles, the shape of the roof off vine undulations and the surrounding hills, and the concept of modern and over-the-top lines atop a traditional base as the physical wedding of the winery's innovative business strategies yet timeless wine preparation techniques), the vast pyramids made of oak barrels (she was sure to tell us several times they were oak and not any other subpar wood), some sort of distillery (?) and then the room where over 150,000 bottles of unusable yet “living” wines were stored. of course, one of the land’s end models on the tour was the first to display his fluency in winese, remarking on the varying colors of crianzas, their legs and questioning their chapitalization. from this point on, most conversations were over my head....except for when i jokingly responded “prunes” to our guide's question of what we thought was added to one kind of red wine. turns out i was right. another forty-something woman next to me heard what i said and iterated it louder, an action for which she received much praise and i the understanding of how nikola tesla felt post-edison fanfare.

anyway, after all of that was over, it was finally time for tasting. anna and i spared everyone our boxed wine and franzia jokes and opted instead to treat ourselves to two glasses each of their red and white. unfortunately, it turned out that the tour ran over and we ran out of cash, which meant that one) we would miss our bus home (and the only one of the day) and two) we had no means to pay for a taxi. fearful of walking home in the former stomping grounds of the ETA, we explained our situation to our guide. she, probably humored because this set of visitor problems was much more interesting than the otherwise typical “i’m torn between the gold and straw rueda; which goes better with veal piccata?” quandaries of the wannabe one-percenters abroad club, offered us a ride home in five minutes.

OK, i’ll take it.

were driven back (something for which we offered to pay her but she wouldn’t accept) and soon got ready for another night out. had some of my beloved salted cod (it’s way better than how i describe it), some kind of expertly prepared ham and manchego cheese sandwich, something in euskara (i just wanted to pronounce a basque dish fun-etically and see what happened; turned out to be more salted cod but that was completely ok) and several other glasses of wine. no hangover this time because every glass was complemented by some morsel of food.

i’d write more but my wrists hurt, i don’t want carpel tunnel before the age of 65 and i want to read a bit. anna and i, meanwhile, have decided that the next destinations must be part of our remaining time in europe: dublin, ireland; bratislava, slovakia; krakow, poland; valencia, spain; lisbon, portugal; san sebastian, basque country.

great, great trip. absolutely what i needed though not necessarily what i deserved.