If this is the first of my posts on the Spanish Wine Tasting that you are seeing, it is the 7th one in a series covering each day of the great wine tasting trip that we did. The first post is a summary of the entire trip and you can find that at https://billwinetravelfood.com/2022/10/10/two-week-spanish-wine-tasting-trip/ The posts for each day get into the details of the wines we tasted, the wineries we visited and what we learned there, the hotels we stayed at, the restaurants we ate at, and the historic, architecture, and geographic sites that we visited.
On Friday morning we left Leon and went to Cantabria and then on to Basque County, two of the 17 Autonomous Communities mentioned in the post for Sept 21. We would think of them as states or provinces but in Spain they are called Autonomous Communities. The map showing those Autonomous Communities is available for download below as it was in the post for the 21st. This map lists The Basque Country as Pais Vasco so I guess there are different names for it.
As a change of pace that morning instead of a winery we went to the Castanon Cidery where they make sparkling hard cider. After that we had a chance to walk through a lovely Cantabrian village, Santillana del Mar, and had lunch there on our own. We then were driven to the beautiful city of Bilbao where we stayed three nights in the exquisite Silken Gran Hotel Domaine right across the street from the Guggenheim Museum. I had a little bug that day and slept through most of the bus rides, missing what Beth said was beautiful scenery and I did not have much appetite.
The Castanon Cidery was a lot of fun. They took us through the cider making process and one of their big things is that cider, at least their cider, needs to have a very long pour so the bubbles release and you get the full effervescence. They started out showing us how to properly pour their cider from the bottle into a glass but because there was a real learning curve here, only water was used. Six of our group volunteered, including Beth and Howard, where they had to hold the bottle over their heads and pour it into glasses held waist high without spilling it. You can see Beth and one of the other women have the bottle in the right position, but not all of it is ending up in the glass. After taking us through the cider making process, they offered tastes directly from one of the very large stainless-steel tanks. I am a big fan of English Hard Cider and I found this cider very light and fruity, so I was not a big fan. You can see the person from the cidery filling a glass for Beth with the glass held knee high and about a 4-foot stream shooting out of the tank into the glass. He did spill a few drops. We ended up in a room with big wooden barrels where we could pour our own glasses, again with a long stream shooting out of the barrel. I claimed IR status for the day with my stomach bug, so I did not try it. Beth did and they had a cylinder there that you could hold your glass over that would catch most of the stream that missed your glass. This became very important for Beth when she could not get the knob on the barrel to close and stop the stream and she had to yell for help. While I was not impressed with their cider, they did make it a fun and educational experience to learn about what they are doing.
From the cidery we went to the village of Santillana del Mar. Antonio took us to the center of the village and gave us an introduction and suggested places we might want to see, and we had about 2 hours to explore the village and have some lunch. This is considered one of Spain’s prettiest villages and it is a Spanish National Landmark as it is one of the most perfectly preserved villages from the 15th – 17th centuries in Europe. Three of the many pictures we took of the town are here with their church below.
We found a small street café where we could have an American sized lunch instead of the main meal of the day. I had a craving for chicken soup to settle my unhappy stomach but expected I would have to find some alternative in this small café. But they had a large crock of delicious chicken soup that was perfect for me. Beth had a nice salad and a lovely omelet. Yes, I even drank water with my soup, not wine, to make my stomach feel better.
Here on the all is one of the signs pointing the way for pilgrims on the Camino Real. There is no one pathway to Santiago De Compostela. Pilgrims take hundreds of different routes through small towns like Santillana del Mar and/or down dirt roads past vineyards like the picture is the post for the prior day shows.
The bus then took us to the city of Bilbao in the Basque Country. We were staying in the Silken Gran Hotel Domaine which is a beautiful premium hotel and we were there for three nights. The hotel is right across the street from the Guggenheim Museum which we visited the next day.
After checking in and unpacking we walked around the museum at night and took some great pictures of it, a few of which are below. The huge topiary shown in full size and then close up is all live flowers. The giant spider outside the museum geta a lot of attention and is at it’s most threatening at night I think.
We then went to the lobby lounge of the hotel for dinner. I just had a salad and Beth had one of her favorites, a Club Sandwich. I was feeling up to having some wine by this time. We had a very big day scheduled the next say including a guided tour of the Guggenheim Museum and lunch at a Michelin One Star restaurant so I was hoping I would feel better by then.
Bill's Thoughts on Wine, Travel, and Food 
