Best wine tour ever at Marques de Riscal in Elciego, Rioja, Spain

I've done a few wine tours before but this was the best yet.  I suppose operating for over 150 years gives you the time to get a few things right.  Starting in the vineyards of Tempranillo behind Frank Gerry's masterpiece hotel the tour took us through the complete wine making process from handpicking to bottling and finishing with a tasting of the Rueda white and Rioja Reserva.  The tour is well worth the 10EUR.

Fermentation tanks.

Wine casks to infiniti and beyond.

Bottling plant.  They produce 10,000,000 bottles per year.

Lunch at Bistro 1860 in the hotel was fantastic.  Our favourite dish was a warm mushroom salad with goat cheese and candied tomatoes. The candied tomato is the pretty smears across the plate.  The cheese was very fresh and tart and the mushrooms earthy and lovely with more of the Rioja Reserve.

The cheese terrine with honey and sesame was also a big hit.

House roasted peppers with anchovies were almost as good as they looked.  

We shared a couple of mid courses.  One was a red bean stew that we all loved.  

The fresh pasta with vegetables and poached egg was rich and satisfying and we probably should have stopped at that.  But no we kept going.  No need to make dinner.

I had a glass of the house Sauvignon Blanc with the Riojan style Cod.  The Spanish seem to love cod and so do I.  Delicious with the pepper sauce.

We also had the oven roasted Hake with potatoes and it was pretty fine.  

Another hake dish with green sauce and clams was the best of the main dishes.

We ordered Vanilla Creme Brulee with cheese ice cream just to find out what cheese ice cream was like. Hard for me to judge since I hate ice cream and I don't think anyone could really appreciate it after all that food.