Day 3

Winery

We start the day with an early breakfast. The suitcases are packed and loaded into the bus. Then we drive for a little over an hour to the large winery, 'Clos d'Esgarracordes'. There, Sonja first takes us through the exhibition and the various steps of wine production. In a large hall, we see different machines, such as the press, the filtration machine, and the storage chamber. In this wine cellar, there are many different barrels with a variety of wines. It smells very old, but also delicious. During the tour, the owner of this winery prepares a very tasty aperitif. We can also taste different wines. In the meantime, he cooks a huge paella on a large olive wood stove. Paella is a typical Spanish rice dish with vegetables, fish, and/or meat. However, we are all already full from the delicious aperitif, so we can't finish everything... unfortunately... around 3:00 PM, we drive to the new hotel in Castellon. In the middle of the city, in a high-rise building, we have nice double rooms with a good view. Some people settle in, others go for a walk in the city or enjoy an aperitif. Our next meeting point is dinner at 8:00 PM. In the restaurant in the casino, we meet two Spanish teacher colleagues of my father. None of us are hungry anymore, so we just have a drink.

Clos d'Esgarracordes:

The winery

The exterior of the winery is an elegant stone building that gives it personality. Unique for its wall paintings with pictorial representations dedicated to the harvest, unique and of great beauty, as well as stuccoed walls throughout the interior of the winery. It is equipped with production tanks with a maximum capacity of 10,000 liters each, which corresponds to 8,200 kg of grapes. All tanks are equipped with a modern cooling system to control fermentation temperatures, which allows us to heat or cool the tanks in a much shorter time and exercise perfect control over fermentation.

Source: www.barondalba.com