Thursday, four days until we board the ferry at Portsmouth bound for Santander, as usual we have not made definite plans about where we are going — one part of me says to finish the road trip through Portugal that we had to abandon because of the Covid lockdown, whilst another part wants to visit Andorra and more Roman sites. Another option was to take the motorhome along the North coast of Spain towards A Coruña and visit the Rias Baixas wine producing area. Wine tasting is our favourite occupation.

We love wine made from the Albariño grape so the north of Spain would seem like a perfect destination. There are a couple of things that put me off. The first is the language, Gallego  or Galician; last time we visited I went into a rural village bar to ask directions, although I asked in Spanish I could not understand a word of the response, and that’s unusual. Over the last couple of days I have searched for information about wine producers in Northern Spain and ‘wine routes’, especially for motorhomes. The results have been disappointing. When planning a motorhome tour we know that if it doesn’t seem to be coming together well then it’s not going to work, so we abandon it.

A lot of the articles I read were written by someone sat at a desk and using stock photos, there is no real substance to these articles, they don’t provide any solid information.

The official tourist websites for Galicia have English versions, but they read worse than Google translations, that doesn’t bode well. Next come the reviews of the wineries on google maps and the websites of the wineries. The reviews look very good, but when you read them carefully you realise that they were written by people who took a winery tour and tasting as part of their holiday. The wine tours and tastings appear to be set up for this group of tourists. That’s not what I’m looking for. 

I seek the smaller wine co-operatives and producers, selling maybe 40 or 50 thousand bottles a year. Such producers are located away from tourist centres, their wines are distinctive and different, but still reasonably priced. What I found around Cambados and Pontevedra were tourist attractions that provided and charged for tours of the winery. Many of the producers were tiny, down to 5 hectares, which results in very high prices for the wines. We experienced a similar situation in the Priorat region where the terrain is very steep slopes that are unsuitable for machines to be used, that leads to prices that easily top €100 a bottle — photo below. I like wine at a more reasonable price, so I think we will be visiting Rioja again.

Click the photo to enlarge.

Priorat wines are not cheap