My dentist back home as a book in his lobby- one of those coffee-table kind of books with lots of glossy pictures- of castles and palaces round the world. So far a few years now, my biannual trip to the dentist included a little trip down memory lane flipping through the chapter on Spain and seeing places I'd been to: the Alhambra, the Bellver Castle in Mallorca, the Escorial, the Alcazar in Segovia, while I mentally added the others in the chapter to my Spain bucket list. There was one in particular that caught my attention -Olite -although I doubted I would ever make it to middle-of-nowhere Navarra to go see it! Well, I now LIVE in middle-of-nowhere Navarra a short half-hour bus ride away. Saturday I finally made the short trip north to see the famous castle and it was just as beautiful as it looks in the pictures!
Olite's other attraction is its wine! The heart of Navarra wine, Olite is filled with bodegas (although I didn´t have time for a tour of any) and Museo de la Viña y del Vino, a museum about the history of wine in Navarra.
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| One of Olite´s many bodegas |
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| Navarra wines |
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| A Roman tile decorated with grapes |
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| Art dedicated to wine |
The museum was fascinating, packed with information covering every aspect of wine from the history of wine in Navarra beginning in Roman times, the changes and modernization of vineyards, the work that goes into growing a grape (protecting the plant from disease, weeding, pruning, and "bleeding" the plant), the characteristics of different varieties of grapes (as well as which parts of the grape are responsible to which components of the flavor), the different climates/soil in the various wine-growing regions of Navarra and the types of grapes found there, the fermentation and purification process and how it differs for different types of wine, what happens during the aging of wine (so interesting as a chemist!), the differences between aging in a cask and in a bottle, and the legislation in Navarra regulating vineyards.
Olite was a beautiful town to explore for a few hours!
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