Our group activity this week was wine tasting at a local winery called Enima located just outside the city. We started with a tour of the winery, we got to see the vineyards with hundreds of different kinds of grape as well as the factory where they aged, bottled, and packaged the wines.
We got to sit down and taste two different kinds of olive oil, served in small rounded glasses that we had to warm with our hands. Both oils tasted earthy and delicious, and the second one had a slight kick to it after you swallowed. Then we tasted the wines. Our tour guide told us that Spaniards (as well as most Europeans) only drink white wines in the summer, and red wines in the winter. She made us observe the wine and smell it before we actually did any tasting. I’m no wine expert (and they all kind of smelled the same to me) but I felt pretty fancy trying to guess the flavors that were in each glass. We tried two of their most popular white wines. The first one was very light and dry, and the second one was amber in color and sweet like a cider. I liked the second one much more than the first.
After we finished at the winery, we went to El Castillo de la Mota (English: “The Castle of the Hill”) in Medina del Campo. El Castillo was not just any castle, it was a medieval fortress built in 1080, complete with a really creepy dungeon and a spiral staircase leading up to a large watchtower. Our tour guide told us that since this was a fortress and not a traditional castle, no queens or kings lived there. It was more of a functional military center used to protect the city below the hill. However, she told us a sad story about the queen Juana la Loca (“Joanna the Mad”) who was imprisoned in the fortress for much of her life because she suffered from various “mental illnesses”. Apparently, Juana’s husband was famous for sleeping with other women, and she spent much of her time trying to escape the castle in order to catch him in the act.
After exploring the castle, we went to get lunch at a cute little restaurant in the surrounding city. I had a tuna-salad dish that was very delicious. Ciao!
Anna-phylactic Shock 