Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Day 16, Friday May 27th, 2016

This was wine tour day. Rachel Richie picked us up in the morning and drove the 45 minutes up to Priorat. The time was not wasted...got a lesson on the Spanish Civil War during the drive. Rachel used to be a battlefield guide, and currently works as a translator and tour guide.

We started in Clos Mogador, the first of the new wineries in Priorat started in the 70s. We toured with Katia, a German woman, who showed us how different wineries set up their vineyards.


Clos Mogador is organic, and does not clear away any of the wild flowers or thatch around the vines. We toured Mogador with a British couple from Brazil.


Pretty countryside.


Terraced hillsides.


This is a one hundred year old Granacha vine.


A view of the wine cellar at Clos Mogador.


Next, we were off to Clos Figueras in Gratallops, which is not only a winery, but a restaurant and B&B. Very pretty place.


The casks are kept down in an old water cistern.


Great lunch here. Salad with figs and hazelnuts.


 We also visited a hermitage up in the mountains.
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Pretty view from up here.


Priorat was spread out before us.


Next we drove up to the northern edge of Priorat and visited Scala Dei.


Beautiful wine cellars here.


Our host was the soft-spoken Yuri. Really nice guy who showed us around and had us taste some delicious wine.


The Scala Dei private cellar.


Lots of old bottles, spider webs and dust.


Casks from many years ago. We wound up buying wine from each place we visited.


A friend of Rachel's ran an olive oil store next to Scala Dei. We stopped there next and picked up some oil and honey. On the way back, we stopped at the wine store in Falset and picked up a wine suitcase for the trip back to Canada.

Back at Mas Mariassa, we had a great salmon dinner.

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