Barcelona Day 3: Mountain and Vineyard
With Saturday came a total change of scenery in the form of a day trip out of the city to Montserrat Monastery and Oller Winery about an hour northwest of Barcelona in the physical, cultural, and spiritual heart of Catalunya. We navigated the multi-level bus depot Estacion Del Norte, met our peppy tour guide Leslie (dad joke expert), and listened to 2,000 years of Catalan history in 20 minutes. Apparently Barcelona was originally a Roman outpost useful for trading along the Mediterranean Sea. Under Franco's dictatorship (Franco was buddies with Mussolini and Hitler), attending Catholic mass was mandatory and speaking in Catalan was illegal–but the language survived with the help of subversive monks and congregants who continued to chant in their native tongue during mass.
We transferred to a cogwheel train and ascended Montserrat
(which means Serrated Mountain), recognizable by its knobby crest like a
dragon's back that likely inspired the towers of La Sagrada Familia and the
rooftop of Casa Batllo. At the monastery, I opted to observe the famed Black
Madonna of Montserrat from a distance inside the church before hiking up to the
cross perched atop the cave where the statue had been discovered. Jesuit
founder St. Ignatius of Loyola was healed from a canon leg wound after praying
for three days in front of the virgin statue, thus sparking a pilgrimage site
for those seeking healing and fertility. I popped into a shop to purchase
biscotti cookies with almonds and white chocolate made by the Benedictine nuns
who live three miles down the road and snacked on goat cheese samples and
ricotta cheese drizzled with honey from the farmers market, where only the
original 10 farming families are permitted to sell their wares. Meanwhile,
foregoing the hike, Mom and my friend opted for the funicular ride up to the
highest point on the mountain, followed by a sampling of walnut and hazelnut
liqueur, before meeting up with the group for our bus ride down to the
winery.
The winery we visited is owned by the Oller family, which
has been in the olive and agricultural business since the 900s and in the last
50 years added winemaking to their repertoire. We enjoyed a lingering lunch of
cucumber and tomato gazpacho soup sprinkled with croutons and drizzled with
olive oil, roasted chicken with asparagus and mashed potatoes, and a complexly
flavored dessert with eight or so layers including raspberry, caramel, cake,
and something sweet and crunchy up top. Afterwards, we toured the cellar where
the wine was stored next to the horse stalls, walked along the gloriously sunny
vineyard toward the factory with its grape selector and vats, and tasted three
wines: a tree fruit young white and a red fruit young red (the two “teenagers”)
as well as a black fruit five-year-old red–all combinations made with their
signature Picapoll grapes.
A brief doze on the bus ride home revived us enough to propose balcony time back at the hotel to close out the day. Helping roll my mom’s suitcases, I was certain there were bricks inside. Turns out it was the delicious champagne and red wine that fueled our nightcap alongside a picnic of cheese, sausage, fig jam, a French pork terrine, and a fig cake with almonds from the mountaintop market that day. We were happy to lighten the suitcase before the journey home!
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