Bodega:

Precio: Lo desconozco. Lo probé en el Restaurante Jose Mari de Ribas del Tereso (La Rioja). Pero debe rondar los 10€.

Nota de Cata: No la encontré, así que, la mía.... Color granate intenso. En nariz se muestra de buena intensidad, aromas frutales, especiados (sésamo) y notas balsámicas. En boca es amplio, buenos taninos, gran acidez y buena persistencia. Vino equilibrado con la fruta justa y agradable tanto al paso como al final.

Opinión Personal: Como deduciréis por la nota fue un vino que me encantó. Gran rioja crianza que ofrece un "plus" de calidad y de "terroir".

Me pega con: Sin duda, cordero al horno (como lo preparan en la zona)

This Barón De Barbón Rioja (2005) is my choice for this Sunday evening. I have made a casserole of baked beans with lots of crispy bacon (which is in a low-temperature oven), and I put together an apple crisp for dessert. Oh, and the main dish will be hamburgers on the grill with fresh tomatoes from the garden.

This wine is made from 100% Tempranillo. It is the perfect balance of toasty oak and very ripe strawberries and cherries. It is surprisingly light and refreshing with subdued tannins.

Tommy is out playing flag football tonight. He will be home soon for dinner. I was able to have a 30-minute Skype call with Tony yesterday morning. It was so good to see him and talk to him. I learned so much about his job, the culture, and his routine in South Korea.

Gigi, if you are reading this, hi!!! Thank you again for your sweet post the other day!

Zwei Tage spanische Vokabeln, lassen meinen südländischen Habitus etwas hervorblitzen.
Das wirkt sich sogar auf meinen Appetit aus. Auf dem Markt zog es mich eher zu Tomaten und Mozarella oder Paprika und Oliven, als zu Kartoffeln und Möhren. Ich habe mehr Lust auf Rioja, als auf Riesling und schwarzhaarige Frauen finde ich heute attraktiver als brünette.

Allerdings lasse ich in nächster Zeit meine Finger von Wein und Weib. Es reicht, dass ich singe ...

I shouldn't really be drinking. Technically this is called 'drinking alone', since my beloved (and I do love him SOOO MUCH! Have I menshnd that b'for?) is away this weekend. Back tomorrow. In time for my hang-over. (I never get them actually. Don't you just hate peple like me?). He's attending a funeral and I stayed behind because I have so much revision still to do. I need every day I have. It's a lot of material and I'm so immersed in this. I'm really studying hard. Really.

Ok, I admit it. I've been doing precious little revision today. Now let's see: Slept until 8am, it's now nearly 10pm, that means I had about 14 hours of revision available and I think I managed a good,  solid, in-depth and studious, er, 45 minutes or so. So that's 45 minutes of revision and 13 hours 25 minutes of anything else I could bloody well think of.

It's just that I'm getting exceedingly sick of this revision. It's getting on my nerves. Baddeley and Wilson's errorful learning experiments? Marr's theory on perception? Coltheart et al and his flashed letter strings? They can all go take a running leap! My brain can take NO MORE. Where is the chapter where the Psychology student snaps and takes a kitchen knife to chapters 3-17, eh?  Or where they dunk the entire book into a bucket of paint?

but on the good side, the Rioja was very nice. And hopefully I get to squeeze my favourite bottom tomorrow when the Sous Chef brings it home.

Only nine more days to go til the exam.

- Un lote de Bodegas Larchago, consistente en dos crianzas y un reserva para Ana Rosa Arteaga, de Ordizia.

- Un menú degustación para dos personas en el Mirador de Ulía para Guadalupe Cascante, de Donosti.

- Un fin de semana para dos personas en régimen de media pensión en Argonz Etxea.   Txomin Balerdi, de Hernani, es el afortunado que disfrutará de este entorno precioso, en plena naturaleza y en un marco acogedor.

Y esto no fue todo, para los socios de Lagunen Txokoa hay unas estupendas entradas para el Supercross Bilbao. La forma de conseguirlas es sencilla: llamar el primero. Esta vez fue Belen Mujika, de Donosti, pero todavía tenemos más entradas, así que si quereis conseguirlas, no teneis más que ser rápidos cogiendo el teléfono.

Y si no sois socios y quereis optar a todos estos premios... ¿a qué estais esperando?

Es una idea original, de acuerdo, pero un poco cursi, en la línea de la directora general de turismo Mónica Figuerola (PP) y como siempre, totalmente elitista y sectaria.

En primer lugar las bodegas riojanas presentarán sus vinos, ¿que bodegas? las bodegas industriales, las grandes, las conocidas, las que cuentan algunas de ellas con capital extranjero, pero en cambio, una vez más el Gobierno de la Rioja margina a las bodegas pequeñas, a las de capital riojano, a las que son la inmensa mayoría en estas tierras.

La bodegas (las grandes, las conocidas) se hermanan con tiendas de lujo, de acuerdo, por aquí puedo entender que buscan un público de nivel adquisitivo alto pero ¿hace falta gastarse 120.000 euros en este jolgorio para invitar a tan sólo 2.000 personas?. Nos sale carita la promoción ¿no?

Lo mejor de todo es la frase del final de la noticia en la fiesta (...) aunque de carácter popular, se ha optado por la distribución de invitaciones para garantizar su buen desarrollo. ¿De carácter popular con invitación para 2.000 personas?

Va, que no nos engañen, que de carácter popular esta acción, como tantas otras que organiza Mónica Figuerola, tiene bien poco.

Para participar en esta iniciativa hay que seguir unas instrucciones muy sencillas: llenar una copa de vino de cristal con vino de Rioja; humedecer la yema del dedo y deslizarla suavemente por el borde de la copa hasta lograr un sonido sugerente, el sonido del vino; finalmente, hay que grabar este momento con cualquier dispositivo de vídeo (cámara, móvil...) y enviarlo al portal del Consejo Regulador . Además de su nota musical, cada participante mostrará en su videoclip ambientes sugerentes y sus momentos y lugares preferidos para el consumo del vino: playa, montaña, winebar, restaurante, hogar... Con los mejores vídeos recibidos se elaborará un videoclip que se convertirá en el Sonido del Vino de Rioja.

Además de subir el vídeo, los aficionados al vino podrán participar realizando distintas actividades, como crear sus propias melodías en el juego online de la web o incluso votar. Los premios que se sortearán entre los participantes son atractivos y variados; desde cursos de iniciación a la cata, pasando por un fin de semana para 10 parejas a Rioja con visitas a las bodegas más emblemáticas, hasta llegar al gran premio, valorado en 5.000 euros, y que consiste en un viaje para dos personas al festival de vino y gastronomía South Beach Food & Wine Festival que se celebrará en Miami entre los días 19 al 22 de febrero.

Con esta novedosa iniciativa del Consejo Regulador de la D.O.Ca. Rioja se pretende posicionar el vino de Rioja como un referente de las nuevas tendencias entre los jóvenes españoles, incentivando el conocimiento y el consumo responsable del vino.

Más información:

www.riojapasion.com

Consejo Regulador Denominación de Origen Calificada Rioja

Estambrera, 52 - 26006 Logroño -España-

Tel. 941 500 400

info@riojawine.com

You could on the other hand take advantage of the low price of wine at the Carrefour supermarket around the corner and buy a fine 2004 Rioja for under three euros a bottle. The economy is certainly pretty messed up.

I am sitting here eating kimchi.  I wrote yesterday that I would try some different types of food and, true to my word, I purchased some horrible cuts of meat from the supermarket after being unable to cater to my wife’s request to find any fish that did not taste of fish.

Little did I know that a day later I would be eating Korean food.  It is not quite what I had in mind, thinking that being in Barcelona I would be focussing on traditional food from the region, but kimchi it is, and it is delicious.

A grandmother prepared it.  Everyone knows that grandmothers make the best home cooking.  Food cooked by grandmothers always tastes better than that of their daughters.  Fact.  No dispute. It simply tastes better in the same way sandwiches cut into triangles taste better than those that are simply cut in half.  The old (she looks old) Korean lady is the grandmother of one of the international students that attend the same school as my girls.  Somehow, along the way, the grandmother found out that I liked food that is highly spiced.  She presented me with a large bag of bright red kimchi, carefully wrapped in plastic and tucked into an old carton of, what appears to be, brown sugar.

Having grown up in SE Asia, Hong Kong to be precise, I have been fortunate enough to have experimented with numerous dishes, from all over Asia.  As it happens Korean food has always ranked way up there in my list of favourites.

Back when I was racing my bicycle full time, I used to treat myself to a Korean BBQ every now and then. The restaurant of choice was located in the once sleepy fishing village of Sai Kung, in Hong Kong. A rather incongruous place for a Korean restaurant but one that had a loyal Korean following.

The restaurant was small and was arranged around booths, with a table in the middle that contained a gas fired BBQ grill.  Customers sat on benches either side of the table.  Small demure Korean girls brought out raw meats, fish and random vegetables to your table, along with copious amount of beer.  This was good. You were then given two sets of chopsticks.  This was confusing.

A wooden pair was meant to be used for attempting to deliver the raw meat to the grill without dropping it in your beer en route, and for turning over the meat whilst it was cooking.  The smaller plastic pair of chopsticks was used to eat with. The general idea was not to mix the two pairs up as you would (a) burn your lips on the hot wooden chopsticks or (b) melt the plastic ones on the grill. It was a mathematical certainty that with enough beer inside you both ‘a’ and ‘b’ would take place.

Back to Kimchi.  Apart from the taste, which, as I have already said, is truly delicious, it is considered a ‘healthy food’ by the US magazine ‘Health’. In fact it is listed as one of the top five "World's Healthiest Foods" for being rich in vitamins, aiding digestion, and even possibly retarding cancer growth.  Hmmm….all good then.

I have decided to take two days off training.  I feel I need to have a bit of a rest.  I believe that I am knocking on the door of being over trained at the moment.  If life was super chilled and I was not juggling looking for a job and dealing with life’s other challenges I could probably handle a greater training load. But I can’t.  One thing I have learnt is that if in doubt. Rest.  Over-training will set you back much further than losing a day or two to rest.

In the case of cycling, over training often happens when a cyclist is training alone and is driven to exceed.  The days are long and rather than sit about watching wildlife documentaries on the television they head out on the bike and ‘beast’ themselves.  Either that or they don’t rest enough coming off a hard event, starting too early on their next ‘block’ of training, without allowing adequate rest.

I am sure many a professional cyclist has trained hard for a long stage race, to find that they have peaked just as the race begins.  For the first few days all goes well and then? Well and then, their legs fall off.

So having said all that I feel quite happy sitting here eating my red-hot kimchi.  I have researched the numerous health benefits and know that I am not over-training. I also have just over two euros in my pocket, which is probably more than the American Treasury Secretary has in his, unless he has managed to get his seven hundred billion dollars.

I may even go a buy a bottle of Rioja.  If I have any change left I will save it for my next rest day.

I know it seems like I will never stop talking about the EWBC but we really packed a lot into the 2 1/2 days we were in Rioja. I can only imagine what the US Winebloggers Conference is going to be like in Sonoma, CA - which I will be flying back to the West Coast to attend in Oct.

The last day of the conference was devoted to visiting wineries, Marques de Risquel - which I will blog about later, Bodegas Bilbainas - where we had our last lunch, and Miguel Merino Bodegas, a small winery smack in the middle of Briones.

winery courtyard

Briones is a quaintly medieval town set up on a hilltop. Historically, the grapes from the area were sent to wineries in Haro to be used in the best reserva wines. Miguel Merino, along with a few other boutique wineries, decided to set up shop here and take advantage of the excellent viticultural conditions surrounding the town. Although the winery is one of the youngest and smallest in Rioja, what it lacks in size it more then makes up for in quality.

Miguel

Miguel himself is quite a character. He regaled us with a story about his sorting table - of all things! During the harvest the workers use a mechanical sorting table to pick out the best grapes as they pass by. There are baskets at the feet of the workers, one on each side, where they throw out the grapes deemed unworthy. One basket is called "purgatory" and the other "hell". The "purgatory" grapes get made into wine for family and friends. The "hell" grapes get picked up by a local farmer each day who feeds them to his cows. Miguel says the cows are known locally for being particulary disagreeable, breaking out of their enclosures and causing general havoc, but he doesn't think it has anything to do with his "hell" grapes.

We sampled 3 of his wines, the '99 Gran Reserva, '01 Reserva and the Unum '02 which his son makes. The '99 Gran Reserva (96% tempranillo, 4% graciano) was from a hard year and Miguel had to work quite hard to coax a good wine out of the harvest but he managed to produce a well made, nicely balanced wine. Softly perfumed with aromas of plum, cherry, toast and spice while the palate was again a nice balance of tannins and fruit with a lovely, long blend of plums, red cherry, toast, and tobacco on the palate. Even though it was almost 10 years old, it still had plenty of raciness about it with bouncing acidity keeping it from flagging down the homestretch, so to speak.

The '01 Reserva (95%tempranillo, 5%graciano)was my favourite of the 3. Ruby red in colour with pleasing aromas of sweet spice, oak and a savoury quality detectable underneath it all. A medium bodied wine with not quite round tannins (maybe oval?)that still had a bit of kick to them. I found plenty of cherry, red fruits, tobacco, sweet spice (I'm thinking maybe even allspice) and a warm toastiness to palate. Lipsmackinly good. I bought a couple of bottles to take home and had one the other night with dinner. Let me tell you, this is a wine that definitely loves to travel, no worries there.

The last one, the '02 Unnum is a wine made by Miguel's son. Made from 100% tempranillo, this wine was a bit different in character to the previous two. An oaky, toasty, almost toffee-ish nose with cooked black fruits in the background. The palate had mouthcoating tannins but was elegantly structured with a long black fruit finish. A big wine that needs a big steak to go along with it.

I found Miguel and his wines made for an engaging visit and hope to visit them again sometime in the near future. Miguel's wines are not that easy to find in the UK but they are available from online retailer ExcelWines.com

homemade spitton

Bodega:

Precio: Aprox. 35€ (en Bodegas Torres)

Bodega: Bodegas Roda

Precio: Aprox. 40€ (en Lavinia)

Nota de Cata: Guinda picota muy intenso. Aroma de buena intensidad, elegante, con fruta negra bien madura, sensaciones minerales, grafito y una perfecta integración de la madera. En boca muestra una enorme estructura, buena acidez, potencia y mucha intensidad frutal, que dan paso a un final muy largo, que aun debe afinar los taninos

Opinión personal: Un deleite.. aún mejor que la añada anterior. Intenso y con personalidad. Muuuy recomendable.

Me pega con: Carnes de caza y solomillo con frutos secos.

Wir haben bis vier gewerkelt, dann haben sich doch noch ein paar Leute eingefunden, um uns beim Kaffee trinken zu helfen. A. kam mit Ihren zwei Kindern, H. mit seinen  zwei Krücken, J. mit einer Freundin, die nicht nur gerne eine, sondern auch seine Freundin wäre.

Nach dem Kaffee trinken hatte keiner Lust zu gehen, also ging es in die Küche. Spaghetti kochen, Tomaten, Karotten, Zwiebeln und Knoblauch schnippeln, Basilikum zupfen, Hackfleisch anbraten, Tisch decken, Rioja öffnen, plaudern, lachen ...

Auch wenn sich selbst nach dem Abendessen noch keine rechte Lust entwickelte nachhause zu gehen, brachen wir gegen 22 Uhr auf, um die U-Bahn zu erreichen.

-And not even of anything exciting did I over-spend, just one night's worth of bloody groceries.

Promised domesticated live in boyfriend that I would cook dinner tonight (which is quite the gesture as I can’t cook). With this blog being anonymous I can admit that I rather ridiculously do none of the cooking in the flat (barely any of the cleaning). I’m just not gifted in that department, and he’s just so particular- even the fridge has a plan. Once in a while I promise to change and generally…just mess things up.

So here we are tonight, I’ve popped to Tescos to pick up dinner,…whereas boyfriend would manage it on £5, I’ve spent…£22. Atleast I remembered to bring some old plastic bags with me.

I started off right, I did exactly what he does and headed for the reduced section (well after I had picked up a new glossy magazine-foul number 1. £3.20)…and it went like this…

Right, looking for something decidedly cheap, quick and foolproof to cook. Raw king prawns. Perfect….just need to pick up some spaghetti and some salad to go with it.

Campo Viejo Rioja- my favourite Spanish wine, reduced! From £7 to £5, hurrah, it doesn’t break the five pound barrier- I can justify it, especially when we already have 6 litres left over from our bounty brought back from Provence this summer. (Foul number 2)

…So then there were other essentials I needed such as a box of smoothies for post work chill out, (3.99) original source lavender and tea tree bath bubbles (£1.99), a bit of Tesco’s finest chocolate (see I went for the cheap non-Green and Black option there) and various bits of salad. Everything of a very sensible price…it just… added up.

I then opted for the self check out as it involves minimal contact with other people. I’m not non-people person, but situations that I hate such as tubes, buses, hospitals and supermarkets, you want to stay well away from me.

However I call over an assistant as my Rioja has a tag on it that needs to come off. The assistant detags and then asks if I have ID.

I repeated his question back to him ‘Do I have ID?’ With a look that said, ‘Do I look seventeen? Do you think I drank Rioja or any alcohol that was pricy enough to need de-taging when I was seventeen?’ No, I drank cheap beer and lots of it.

Surely one can guess underage drinkers buy what they buy. They work out the value of alcohol per sterling pound…its student logic.

-The look made him withdraw.

So I don’t know whether to go through the receipt crossing through items which are definitely not for sharing before putting it in the pile of bills, or just write off the whole experience. Next time I definitely require guided shopping.

It was raining when I got up this morning and I wanted to go for a run. I talked my son, Tony,  into accompanying me on his bike. It was great!

It is a beautiful evening in Michigan. We had rain this morning but the sun is shining and the sky is blue now. Neighbors are out and about grilling and enjoying the evening.

This wine is an elegant Spanish tempranillo that is dry and understated with licorice undertones. This is a perfect red for a special Sunday evening. Cheers!

We decided to branch out from the Italian reds and try something Spanish.  I've had a few Spanish reds before, but generally of the '40-bucks-at-a-restaurant' variety.  We picked this one up for around $10 or $11 dollars--I don't remember exactly how much.  I don't know much about Spanish wines, but I did a bit of research and found that 'crianza' refers to aging time.  I found inconsistencies in how long it actually means, but 'crianza' is at the low end of aging.  (However, it is better than 'sin crianza.')

Interestingly enough, there was a graph on the back of the bottle.  I'm not sure what the y-axis is, but I can assume it is 'deliciousness.'

No special occasion for this wine, just watching presidential speeches.  Which definitely requires wine.  This was a perfectly drinkable bottle.  It had the smoothness of a merlot, and got more interesting as it sat.   Nothing wrong with it, but nothing remarkable. I plan to try more Spanish wines, as I know there are some fantastic ones out there.  This one was just okay.

The bottom line:  Plenty of more exciting bottles out there.

I discovered in the beginning of the summer season Baigorri, thanks to my friends from Barolo, the trendy Madrid wine store in Príncipe de Vergara 211, a beautiful place where you can talk and learn about wine without any rush. They recommended Baigorri crianza highly, a new Rioja from Alava, and I am very glad I trusted them. Baigorri is a perfect young red wine for the amazing price of around 9 euros, a modernized version of the best crianzas in the region.

On August 15, big celebration day in my Galician family, we drank Roda I, the up market, trendy Rioja (unfortunately my Conde de Rodas name has no connection witht this wine at all!) and we truly enjoyed the depth of colour and taste of this Reserva, I have wonderful pictures of my daughter Blanca taking pictures at all of us while we toasted to her and to all the family.

The rest of the days in Monterroso, Galicia, my brother in law provided us with Valenciso 2002, from one of my favorite wine makers. The 2002 edition is very nice but I preferred the amazing 2001 one and I am looking forward to their 2003 creature. Last but not least one of our night outs in La Coruña we drank La Montesa Herencia Remondo, a serious but sensual Rioja for an amazing price.

We then moved to our Mediterranean refuge in Valldemossa and for the first time in my life I ordered a wine at a restaurant that was unkown to my father -so far, I had never been able to surprise him. The lucky strike was Allende Rioja 2004, an elegant and seductive Rioja, very Carla Bruni like and the date was August 23, 2008, just for the record. My father liked Carla, meaning Allende, so much, that he said: "it's OK".

The last day in Majorca we had lunch with my cousin Juan and his wife Adela in their beautiful house hanging over the Son Gallard cliffs, overlooking the sea. I brought him "Son Bordills", Shiraz, a wine from the island that I have commented before and once we started drinking their terrace was paradise, a real one, unlike the one experienced by bored Robert Graves, who retired to the nearby village of Deia saying: "this is paradise, if you can stand it" (in a letter to Virginia Woolf).

The last weekend we flew back to La Coruña, Galicia and we drank the best wine so far this summer, Cortes de Cima, from the South of Portugal, a happy, singing wine that soothen for me the abrupt end of the season.

On the plane back to England from the EWBC I was exhausted!! But what a weekend! I met loads of really great people, drank plenty of fabulous (and interesting) wines, visited some fantastic wineries, met the winemakers, had my eyes open to the possibilities out there regarding the web via the both the roundtable discussions and informal ones and generally had a blast. There was so much going on, I barely had time to catch my breath. But who'd want to stop with all the excitement surrounding us? The conference was extremely well organized and planned. It was such an exhilarating and febrile atmosphere to be a part of that I can't wait to attend the next one and I'm already planning on attending the USA conference in October.

I have to give a HUGE thanks to the organizers, Ryan and Gabriella Opaz of Catavino and Robert Mcintosh of The Wine Conversation. And, a big shout out to Robert for his ability to get all us bloggers moving on time and in the right direction. I think I overheard him comparing us bloggers to herding cats but cats are much easier to direct!

The first night was the winebloggers invitational,whereby we each had to bring a wine that represented our area of interest or expertise. I had chosen an english rosé (made from the germanic variety, dornfelder) from the Chapel Down winery based in Kent, southeast England. What a reaction! That rosé definitely raised a few eyebrows and looks of disbelief. People had heard of English wines but those Continentals were rather dubious as to the quality of the wine. I found out later that not many had ever actually had the opportunity to try English wine before the conference.

Luckily, it passed with flying colours! I had tried it before I left so I knew that it wasn't bad but everyone else was surprised at the quality. I got quite a few positive comments from the others. So, score one for English wines! I think it convinced a fair amount of people that England is capable of producing quality table wines.

In case your wondering, here are my tasting notes for the Chapel Down English Rosé 2007:

A clear, pale, smoked salmon coloured wine. Upon pouring, the fresh summer smells of England seem to rise up from the glass. It reminded me of a summer's day after a sudden downpour in the park, you know, the clean scent of the air that follows a sudden rainstorm while your picnicking in the park (as so often occurs here) and after you've just run to the car and thrown everything in the backseat! Wet grass, a bit herby, red cherry and something akin to strawberries after they've been sitting in sugar and have gone all syrupy were some of the aromas that I detected.

It was however, quite dry and crisp. Plenty of fruit on the palate, strawberry tart with plenty of zippiness to keep it from becoming sluggish. There was also a hint of dill on the back of it and an apricot-like finish, which was quite long. I think this is a really great food wine, something to have with grilled salmon and boiled new potatoes tossed with dill. We had it with a hunk of mature english cheddar and bread and it was scrumpdiliumptious!

Thanks to Penny at the Bluebird Wine shop for recommending that one.

retail £11
alc., a light and lovely 11%

Flying over the Bay of Biscay this morning, looking down onto the green craggy hills of the sun-drenched Spanish coast was a bit of a surprise. Over the years, I've visited Spain many times but always the southern coast of Spain or Madrid, both of which are more reminiscent of semi-arid deserts with their scrub covered brown rolling hills and plains rather then the lush carpet of green I was currently flying over. I had to remind myself why I was on that plane. I was here for the European Winebloggers Conference 2008 (EWBC) taking place in Rioja that weekend. I hoped that it was going to be a fun and informative weekend and seeing as copious amounts of Riojan wine were going to be available, I knew that it would at least be an opportunity to sharpen my Rioja tasting skills.

I wasn't really sure what to expect but the organizers, Ryan and Gabriella Opaz from the Catavino blog and Robert McIntosh of The WineConversation blog, have a full schedule planned for us and plenty of Riojan wine on hand for us to sample. Not to mention the winebloggers invitational, where we all get to bring our own wines to share. I'm full of anticipation while I wait at the Bilbao Airport for my ride to Logrono in Rioja.

Las estadísticas dicen que La Rioja ha evidenciado un crecimiento constante del 20% en turismo de vinos en los últimos 6 años. De esta manera, se sitúa como el destino enólogico más importante de España.

Estos resultados son producto del trabajo realizado en conjunto entre los organismos reguladores, el gobierno, las comarcas productoras y cada una de las Bodegas que día a día mejoran sus facilidades para abrir las puertas al visitante.

El valor cultural Riojano es sumamente abarcador y milenario, y esto esta plasmado en cada esquina de la región. Es de destacar que el museo riojano de la Dinastía Vivanco es uno de los más completos museos del Vino del mundo. Ahí se pueden apreciar desde piezas egipcias hasta pinturas de Picasso.

El consejo de la denominación de orígen, ha elaborado un una completa guía de bodegas de rioja que incluye las caracteristicas de las bodegas que tienen sus facilidades abiertas al turismo, donde aparecen reseñadas 178 bodegas del total de 470 inscriptas en la denominacón.

La guía divide al territorio en 7 rutas del vino,con fotos, mapas y pictogramas, agrupando las bodegas por localización geogáfica a fin de facilitar la experiencia del visitante y maximizar su tiempo.

I reduced the marinating liquid with 10 shallots and a bottle of taylor fladgate.  See below.  We drank some old, dusty Rioja.

A cheese course was appropriate.

We're looking at a Bucheron, Gorgonzola Dulce, Manchego, and Tome de Savoie.