Our visit to a Bodega - Wonderful experience!

We had a meeting with Ivan, said Y-von', Russian style. He is a friend of Pepe and teaches English and Spanish. He is drawing up some tour choices for us which will get us to new places with a guide!

This is Ivan's post of Pepe Senior's bodega. http://www.globallanguagetraining.com/very-spanish-wines-drinking-the-culture-an-experience-for-the-senses/

We had a fantastic day at the family home, the wine making area is called a bodega, of Pepe Senior and son, met Danny, another friend of Pepe who spoke English also.

The home is in Trebujena, an hour’s drive south of Sevilla. Pleasant drive through areas that are planted for cotton. They had been used for wheat when Sevilla was very poor and long aqueducts line the edges of the fields, many are broken now.

We arrive and are greeted warmly by Pepe Senior. We get a tour through the family home which was last inhabited by an aunt. No one lives there now but Pepe Senior often goes there to create his wine. The home is full of family pictures, grand parents, and the generations after them. Dampness is a problem there due to humidity and shows on the walls in some places but overall it is a beautiful home. It has an atrium in the middle with mature plantings and a water fountain.

Large philodendron and tile in atrium

 

Pepe Senior in the atrium

So we enter the area where the wine is made - the Bodega and Pepe Senior brings in an array of local foods, yum! 

Left to Right: Pepe Senior, Danny, Pepe, Bruce and food, yum!

Then the wine tasting starts and he uses a “stick” made from a whales mustache hair to use as a dip stick, really! I asked twice thinking I didn’t understand at first. Plunged into the oak wine barrel with a small tube attached to get by the lees and into the wine, poured out into glasses, not worried about what went on the floor, small amount, he’s obviously very practised at doing this.

Says something like this is the brilliant golden ruby like wine... Spaniards, feel free to correct me.

We sat around a table and enjoy increasingly older wines and finally a cognac which Bruce said was better than any he had ever tasted. I don’t really drink it so had nothing to compare to but it was very tasty! Conversation was illuminating about how life had been and is now.

Bruce, Pepe Senior and I

 

Bruce, Pepe Senior, Me and Pepe, our excellent host

We then walk up the street for a coffee among whitewashed buildings which made me think of what Greece would be like, but no, I’m in Spain. 

Fountain in square

Pepe Senior picks us lemons and oranges from his tree, the same tree in fact due to some clever grafting. 

Unripe lemon and oranges

Affectionate farewells and Pepe drives us back, different route that went along Calle Las Palmeros, where there are many stately mansions and homes, mostly used as part of  Expo ’92. - oops thats 1929, they had one in 1992 as well but in a different locale.

We have never experienced such hospitality! They brought us into the family. We felt part of it and welcomed so well. It was a definite highlight on this trip.