The Ellis daytrip to the Wine Country.

The Ellis family booked me for a few tours in Barcelona. In our last day we had planned to go to the Penedès Wine country and Montserrat. At first I had suggested we visited the Codorniu cellar, the largest in the world, because of its spectacularity. But after spending a few days with them I got to know them better and when I saw they were so much into food and wine and they had been to some emblematic French cellars already, I decided they'd appreciate something else.

So I changed bookings and got a private tour of the Gramona cellars, a local family-owned winery that has won many international prizes.
We were received there by their Communications person, who showed us personally their old cellar. That day there were people working in the old building (most of the day, the staff is working in their modern venue at the vinyards), so we were lucky to see a lady glueing labels by hand, another lady checking the machine that wraps the cork, and we even had a demostration of how they degorge the botels by hand. That was so unique! In most cellars degorging is done by machines who freeze the neck of the bottle to remove the sediments. Only very skilled workers are able to do it manually!
See my video! (oh, I'm so glad to have this video well recorded... the other time I saw it done, I didn't realize my camera was lopsided!)



After the tour of the cellar, we were taken to the vinyards to see the baby grapes: they won't be ready to be harvested until August. But the views where great! Lori said it was the first time she was taken to the vinyards when visiting a cellar!

And back to the cellar, we had a wonderful wine tasting. The Ellis had asked for a real tasting, not the average tourist one, so we got to try 3 different cavas, plus the bottle that had been degorged in front of us (it's amazing how agressive the bubbles are at that moment: it's truelly dramatic for the wine! it seems it needs a few days to reach its perfect point), and 3 wines (2 that were included in the tasting, plus a special Ice Wine for dessert that was the cellar's gift.

I'm not used to drinking much, so I was starting to (as the Ellis said) "riding the snake". But we headed soon for lunch at a great local restaurant where we were the only foreigners and had a beautiful meal before going to Montserrat.

After such an intense morning, there wasn't much time left to wander in the Monastery, but we still made it to ride the cablecar up, visit the Virgin shrine, lit up a candle for her and enjoy the place with almost no tourists around (most tour groups leave the mountain after the Choir sings, and at that time we were enjoying our wine so we missed both Choir and crowds, which was fine for the Ellis).

We decided next time they come (to see the progress of the Sagrada Familia church), we'll visit some other cellar, then drop them in Montserrat for the night (as they enjoy places when they get empty) and the next they I'll pick them up for some other tour out-of-the-beaten-track. Maybe the Cardona salt mines, who knows?