Drink - Victoria Moore walks through the valley of vineyards
Under the arches of the old monastery, I counted nine beautiful girls flitting between the wedding party guests as they arrived for supper. The next morning, however, we saw only the father of the bride ordering a "cafe con leche con mas cafe que leche" (coffee with milk with more coffee than milk), and maids carrying trays piled with rich cheesecake and cream-filled sponges up the stairs to the girls in their rooms.
Outside, the sun shone for the first time in a week. I was not surprised. It seemed obvious that a family such as this would not marry off their daughter under a grey sky. Thanks to them, our walk through some of the Riojan vineyards was a hot one.
Rioja, which takes its name from the Rio Oja, a puny little thing compared to the region's main river, the Ebro, is one of Europe's oldest wine-producing areas. The local people were already treading grapes and turning the juice into wine when the Romans came, and they refused to stop even when Moorish invaders, with their strict intolerance of alcohol, came pushing up from the south.
We began our walk in a small village called Abalos. The day before, a brace of excited Americans told us that they had bought wine there from a man "who actually lived in a cave". To our relief, there was no sign of either Americans or cavemen. Those who believe in what the French call terroir - the idea that you can taste the hillsides where the vine grows in the wine - would not have been surprised by what we saw.
The slopes were knobbled and twisted like an old man's spine. As the sun shone down, it burnished the fierce soil to the colour of garnet. The vines stood in proud rows. The sun was so high that their shadows barely darkened the earth.
But wine also tastes of the men who make it. In Emilia-Romagna in Italy, the white, dry, light wines cut across the richness of the pasta sauces. In the Pays Nantais, on the north-west coast of France, the Muscadet-sur-Lie is a perfect complement to the local seafood. And here, in Rioja, the sturdy, fiery wines are more than a match for the coarse flavours of jamon and chorizo. The wine tastes old, too - even the younger-style Crianzas seem to creak with the centuries of their inheritance.
And yet, although the winemakers of Rioja have not traditionally embraced innovation, the style of wine they produce is newer than you might think. The French transformed Riojan winemaking practices in the 19th century, says John Radford in The New Spain, and the Spanish bent their art to please the thirsty French. Radford continues: "Indeed, mature Rioja still brings tears to the eyes of old men in southern France who remember the way claret used to taste before scientists got their hands on it." But it is reductive to think of Rioja as nothing more than a Spanish early claret. It has plenty of qualities of its own, and does not even rely for flavour on the same grapes - Cabernet Sauvignon is forbidden in Rioja, except in a handful of places where it has been grown for so long that it has been granted exceptional status. Nor is the region immured in the past - not now - although some specialist producers do still tread their grapes in stone troughs. What does seem astonishing is that so few of the bodegas have seen fit to emulate the French, and encourage eager tourists to taste, then buy, their wines.
Around Haro, the main centre for the production of Rioja, I unearthed only three places offering tastings or visits. By arriving on Friday at lunchtime, we just missed the Muga tour (11am, weekdays only). Instead, we slipped into a shop around the corner, endured a 47-minute conversation consisting of only one sentence - "The 1994 vintage is berry gud" (translation: "I intend to sell you the 1994 wine") - and then discovered we were expected to pay for all the bottles of wine that had been opened for us to sample.
But you know you can taste wines anywhere. The place is the thing; I learnt far more about the wine on our walk than I ever did from anything in the glass - even if, by the end of it, my heels and toes were covered in burgeoning blisters the shape and colour of small grapes.
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