Day 5, A visit to Urbina

We stayed over night in one of my favourite small towns in Spain, Haro in Rioja. The town is set on a hill overlooking the valleys of Rioja and the narrow pedestrianised lanes and full of tiny tapas bars, glasses of local red wine are €0.60 each.

Ten minutes drive down the road is the even sleepier town of Cuzcurrita de Rio Tirón is the bodega of Urbina, one of the Rioja’s we sell at Bravas. We had arranged to meet Pedro at 11 am so he could show is around the Bodega and we could taste their range of wines.

Urbina is a family winery which has been producing wine for four generations, they own thier own plots of vineyard in the countryside 5 km around the village. They only use their own grapes (lots of wineries buy in additional grapes and some don’t have their own vines at all) this means they have total control over the process of winemaking from start to finish. Like most of the wines we sell at Bravas Urbina is made as naturally as possible although it is not classed as organic as Pedro tells us in some cases the by having to use organic methods you sometimes are not doing the best for the land anyway, for example the use of copper which is permitted in organic viticulture but is far more toxic than some non oraganic chemical which are not permitted.

Pedro has an amazing wealth of knowledge about wine, he spent 3 years in America including time working in vineyards in Calafornia, this has given his as well as perfect English a refreshingly open attitude to new world winemaking ideas, this is really interesting to see in such a traditional bodega.

After an in depth tour of the bodega and a tasting of some of the wide range of wines they make at Urbina Pedro suggested we go to the local village for some lunch.

When we arrived for lunch the charismatic landlady of the restaurant sent us away again to take a tour of the village as the fire needed to be lit.  We were going to have a very traditional dish from Rioja, baby lamb chops cooked over vine wood.  We started with a first course of various local and sersonal vegetables all prepared differently, the highligh being some local wild mushrooms.

Then came the lamb, a whole mountain of it.  The chops were sweet and delicatly spicy, Pedro told us only the vine wood and create the right flavour.  To acompany the lamb was a simple salad of roasted peppers.