Day 9 - Granon to Vitoria

We had to get up early to head to a winery tour my cousin setup for us. So we went to a small town in the Basque country that boarders La rioja (wine area) and is part of the Rioja wine organization. The town where the winery is is all the way on top of a hill, all original surounded by a wall with a church and houses within. So after somehow finding a spot on the narrow streets we walk into what looks like a residence but is actually a bodega. They are two of the only artisan wineries in their town. The first thing you see is big holding tanks with pictures of them stepping on the grapes. They still step on the grapes first and then after that use a press to lightly get anything else. The stems and seeds that are left over and sent back to the vinards and used as fertilizer. So next she show us the map of the town, under each house are tunnels that were originally used when the area was a fortification. Later the tunnels were turned into bodegas. So down the steps we go. This place had three tunnels. The first directly below the stoping tanks is used to forment the wine. It is and open concreate basin, but the room is closed of during the process. The next room is where they keep the barrels, they make about 35K bottles of wine a year. The last room is the tasting room, it contains arches that supposidly the nobels would only drink wine under the arches because it showed their rank. So after seeing all these neat original old things we went to see where my other cousin works. He works in a bottling company that everything is new, they have huge stainless steel tanks that they keep the wine and a new production floor located in a wharehouse in an industrial part of town. Very diffrent setting. So then we head for lunch in Vitoria, I belive it is the capital of the basque country. After lunch in my cousins bar we head to the old town (casco viejo) to see the cathedral. It is in the process of being restored but it is open to the public during the restoration. So you walk in on scafolding underneath where the original floor would have been and the show you and older structure from 1200 ad they discovered under the floor. As in many cathedrals there are barried nobelmen and bishops but as part of this escavation they found hundreds of skeletons under the floors. Id say they must have escavated 30 feet below where the floor would have been. The whole project is based on getting to the foundation so they can reinforce it inorder to save the structure. It is situated on a hill so alot of the columns have started to shift under presure. Thats about the extent of todays activities. Tommorrow we head back into france hopefully we have connectivity.