The last few days, we've been seeing a lot more vineyards as we've been hiking. The last time we saw this many grapes in the field was in the Rioja region. The region we are in now is called Briezo. There has been a lot of advertising along the way for wines from this region, and also for some of the local wineries. We've even seen a couple of wine cooperatives the past 2 days (one that offered a glass of wine and a tapa for 1.50 Euros, but we still had about 10 km or 6 miles to hike, so we passed on the offer).
The first picture is of a bottle of wine from our dinner last night. Of note: wine here costs the same as bottled water, and is cheaper than soft drinks and most fruit drinks, ie orange juice. Typically, when Linda and I buy a pilgrim's menu, that includes a first course, a second course, a dessert, bread and a bottle of wine for us to split. All for 10 Euros each, or roughly $26 in total. And it's a lot of food, too. Anyway, the label on the wine bottle in the picture is actually the name of the restaurant where we ate (Meson Puente Romano, or Roman Bridge House, since it was right next to the bridge that I included in yesterday's post). It wasn't a fancy place, either, but it appears there are enough wine growers around here that they're willing to put in the effort to place a private label on a bottle of wine that gets served as part of the pilgrim's dinner. And the wine was good, too. Not knock your socks off good, but very easy to drink.
The second picture comes from today's walk along the Camino. As we were going along, we came across a man in this little building who was making his own wine. He called it his "hobby". He has his hand resting on his homemade wine press. In front of the wine press, you can see inset into the floor a big bucket. When he turns the wine press, the grape juice is squeezed out the bottom of the barrel and into that big bucket. He then would take the smaller bucket that he is currently holding, and transfer the grape juice into the silver vat that is behind and to the right of the wine press, where he then ferments the juice until it becomes wine (I have the feeling there is no oak involved in this fermentation process, as I didn't see any barrels anywhere and this is a one man operation). Anyway, he gave us a taste of the grape juice that was coming out of the press. It was obviously very sweet, and very refreshing (particularly as we were about two-thirds into our 18 mile hike at this point in time).
The third photo is of some of the people we saw out in the fields harvesting the grapes. They did it the old fahioned way, picking the bunches of grapes, putting them in a soft plastic bucket, and when that was full carrying it over to a tractor with a trailer that all of the grapes were dumped into. Most of the people seemed to be having a good time, although it looked like back-breaking work, particularly as most of the vines were not attached to trellises, so the grapes were lower to the ground. Thankfully, it wasn't too hot. The high today was probably in the mid 70's. I'm not sure how long the harvest season lasts here, but they are going to need to get a lot more people out in the fields in order to get all of the grapes that we saw that appeared to be ready to be picked.
The last photo is of a winery that was in the town of Villafranca de Bierzo, as we were walking to our hotel. The men were unloading the grapes from the trailers and putting the them into a press that squeezed out the juice. And then the grape juice would be transported to the big silver vats to the right in the photo for fermentation. So a process very similar to the older gentleman, just larger in scale and more automated.
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