A trip to a bodega / legless in Murcia.

Some Spanish friends invited us to look around a local bodega -vineyard with them. Ever keen to further our local knowledge and practise our Spanish we swiftly agreed to this idea - the husband being particularly enthusiastic about becoming more acquainted with the local vino. We met our friend Juan in Lorca.( For those of you who've read my previous posts about the earthquake that took place in 2011, you will be pleased to hear that this beautiful city is much restored to its former glory.) We drove off in our car and Juan explained that a few members of his family would be joining us. "Oh, who's coming we asked?" - eleven names later we realised that not all of Juan's ten brothers and sisters and their partners were coming but a fair percentage. Only one of them spoke English so we felt a language challenge coming on.
En route a Harley Davidson motorbike passed us. This was driven by Juan's brother Jose-Mari with his wife Maria-Jose riding pillion. In Franco's era all babies were named after saints - this makes for interest in any crowded place when trying to attract someone's  attention. A shout of Jose, Juan or Maria will elicit at least three people responding. A more cruel usage was used during the Civil War. When men were being called from a group to be executed, just the first name would be called followed by a long pause so that all the men with that name had to wait in suspense to hear their fate.
When we arrived at the bodega our guide explained that first we would look round the no longer used buildings which were used from the end of the Civil War in 1939.

Our guide explained that due to the impoverished state of Spain post civil war they had to be inventive. This photo shows the engine that was used for pumping purposes -it's from a Chrysler car!

 

Petrol was rationed to aprox. 36 litres per month. The tracks which the massive vats were moved on are an exact copy of British railway tracks. In another ancient building the wine was fermented. The man working there sang the whole time ,(rather like a canary in a mine in Wales !), because if he stopped the other workers knew that he'd been overcome by the carbon-dioxide fumes given off by the fermenting grapes.

Electricity was installed in 1973. Health and safety is an unknown concept in this part of Spain!



Talking of which in another building we were shown holes some 10metres deep. If a cat fell in they were able to climb up the pipe, but when a dog fell in once they had to lower a tray and amazingly he survived. Whether they continued with that particular vintage is unknown.

After about an hour of this our heads were reeling with trying to translate and look as if we had some idea of what was being said! We were taken across to the modern building where the wine is produced today and had another hour or so of explanations which I won't bore you with.



 

Apologies for the picture quality - I hadn't started the tasting, honestly!
Then came the tasting it was around 2pm, we hadn't eaten since breakfast, and we'd been standing listening to technical Spanish for two hours - it tasted pretty good. We all left staggering due to  the weight of our purchases probably and went off to lunch.
The restaurant was a tented extension in a field - as you can clearly see it's only rained four times here since October - don't moan at me - it's not my fault.

 

 

The restaurant only opens when it's pre-booked and we'd paid about £12 for lunch. Lunch consisted of  :

      Beer and tapas,

      Ham, cheese, thinly sliced pork, and bread.

      A large salad.

      Huge plates of roast kid and potatoes and roast chicken and potatoes.

      A choice of cold custard or rice pudding, (small bowls of custard are a popular pudding here).

      An almond cake.

      Not bad value for £12 each especially as it was accompanied by as much wine as you wanted and followed by coffee with three bottles of liquers left on the table for people to help themselves - Hardly anyone availed themselves of the opportunity to drink these. There is a very different attitude to alcohol here  and people in general only drink to accompany food. Spanish friends are puzzled by the concept of going for a drink without a meal. 

This was another great day with friendly and welcoming Spanish people. To be accepted here all you have to do is learn Spanish.

I hope you've enjoyed this blog, the next one will be out in June.Comments are welcome  

Thanks for reading, Cathy