Spain and Portugal Road Trip, Part Two- Two days, two valleys, two babies, two wineries, one border, one puncture and a ton of custard based pastries...

Visiting Ribera Sacra was a detour from our original route, but @bodega_ronseldosil was so worth the trip. I fell head over heels in love with the place and the wines so only read the rest of this paragraph if you can cope with my late night rambling love letter... The winery is set in the idyllic Sil Valley with a patchwork of vineyards clinging precariously to the steep slopes of Roman terraces on both sides of the river. Using a range of indigenous varietals, grown with organic practices in the vineyards and made with minimal intervention in the winery, Ronsel do Sil are creating captivating wines that were all too easy to drink, but I’m finding hard to forget. I’m lying in bed still mesmerised by the Merenzao (Trousseau in the Jura and Bastardo in Portugal); picking apart the complexed combination of concentrated fruit, vivid acidity and almost cucumber skin vegetal finish. Their Mencia was lively, juicy and fresh and if I hadn’t been driving or breast feeding I could have drunk a bottle and the Treixadura was elegant and poised with crisp fruit, stoney minerality and just enough oak to give it breath without losing any definition. 🤤

After a soggy tomato roll by the river we headed over the border and down to the Douro. This afternoon we visited @quintadovallado, thankfully not as far off the beaten track as we had to change a wheel en route. I’ve been a fan of the Vallado wines for a long time and it was great to finally visit the vineyards and see their state of the art gravity fed winery, complete with tanks for traditional foot treading and a concrete sphere to create their semi-carbonic Vinha da Coroa. The reds we tried were all tasting great, but my highlight of the day was the 20YO Tawny, as sweet and sticky as the figs we’d scrumped at lunchtime🤭

Tomorrow we’re off on a slow drive to Coimbra on the space saver wheel.🙈