Myra and Gerry Spain 2017

Gerry has renamed this tour: Cork, Food, Wine, Culture, Repeat. What a tour Bark To Bottle has been!  If we had to name this tour, it would be "Cork, Food, Wine, Culture, Repeat".  We came to learn about cork and came away with so much more. There is no way we could have had the educational experience about cork, the cork process, the foods of Spain, the wines and the history and culture of this country on any other tour. This was an authentic experience delivered by two guides who make a fabulous team.   Patrick Spencer, the Executive Director of the Cork Forest Conservation Association (Oregon) and Miguel Rollán, the owner of  "Two Birds One Stone" travel expedition company (Spain)  knocked it out of the park.   Together they  brought their contacts, passion and enthusiasm about the cork industry, nature, Spanish culture, foods and wine.  They also showed extreme kindness and sincerity to us and everyone they encountered. The l...

We took an early flight from Ibiza to Barcelona and met up with a tour of La Sagrada Familia, a giant Basilica that has been under construction since 1882.  It is Antoni Gaudi's most famous work in Barcelona and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We visited La Sagrada Familia 12 years ago and the stained glass windows that flood the temple with beautiful light were not there at that time.  So much has been done yet there is still so much to be done before completion of this magnificent church. After walking around Barcelona, Ralph, Donna, Gerry and I went to a very special dinner at a restaurant named Uma.  They only serve 12 people and the dishes were paired with wine.  Each of our 11 courses were amazing.  What a way to end this journey in Spain! Remember the bowl? The cork bowl made it home safely.  This beautiful piece of art is in our Dining Room as a special reminder of our 44th Anniversary and of this wonderful trip!

The four of us flew to Ibiza for a few days.  We had arranged transport through the hotel along with a bottle of Cava that we shared outside.  Although our hotel facility was very nice, the rooms were excruciatingly small.  The folks in the room next to ours had their luggage on their balcony because of the limited space in the room!  The four of us had to share wine we had bought from Ramos-Paul while sitting on our bed - there was no other place in the room to sit and the hotel would not let us drink it on the rooftop or by the pool because we had not bought it from them. Our first day in Ibiza we all slept in a bit and stayed at the hotel pool, napped, and walked to dinner. The next day we rented a car and cruised around the island.  We went to a funky beachside restaurant for lunch and walked the beach in a small cove. Ibiza beaches are beautiful and the sunbathers are frequently topless or nude.  Funny how it is just seemed natural. ...

Our last day on the Bark to Bottle tour began with a visit to the Oller Cork Company that makes champagne corks.  This was like visiting a modern computer center versus one from the 80's.  Prior to this, all the cork factories were filled with workers.   They had expensive, modern machinery but it was still a very manual process.  This factory was running with tons of machinery and very few people.  These corks are different in that they are composite corks with two natural flat disks placed at one end.  The machinery then knows which end to stamp and the end with the natural cork is what is inserted into the bottles. We then visited the family-owned Cavas Recaredo Winery and our tour guide was Ton Mata, one of the grandsons of the founder of this winery.  Their sparkling wine was reported in a review by New York Times as the best sparking wine in the world. With our limited experience, we agree!  Ton gave us an insiders tour (we were unab...

We started our morning by travelling to the old city of Girona. It was a fascinating old city with cobblestone streets, steep inclines and beautiful views.  Many scenes from Season 6 of the Games of Thrones were filmed in these narrow "Old Europe" streets.  This has increased tourism, much to the pleasure of the local merchants.  However, many of the residents are not pleased and openly protest against it. After walking through the city we went to lunch at a restaurant named Draps.  As usual it was a seven course meal with wine and 2 desserts.  While difficult to say (because all meals have been great), this may have been the best lunch of the trip. On our way back to the bus we encountered a woman playing steel drums unlike any we had ever seen.  Unlike Caribbean steel drums where the musician strikes the inside of the drums with a mallet, her drums were shaped like two mushroom caps put together and she played them with her hands. The sou...

After breakfast we traveled to the nearby town of Palafrugell. There we visited Vigas cork producers - an old, but much more automated producer than the one we visited in Extramadura.  Vigas makes 80 million corks a year,  60 for wine and 20 for champagne. The entire cork industry produces over 13 billion corks each year world wide.   Sixty to Seventy percent all cork is rejected by stopper makers - it is reprocessed for other uses including composite wine corks. Bottle corks are printed by laser with the name/logo of the individual winery.  Many wineries do not want the name of the cork manufacturer printed on the cork, others do. Corks produced by Vigas have a small "JV" layered on the cork stopper. We went to a large liquor store across the street from the cork manufacturer and the prices were amazing.  We bought two bottles of Miguel's favorite wine to share with the group later that evening. Our next stop was the Cork Museum where w...

We actually slept in this morning and got the sleep we needed! Our day was spent on the Catalonian Les Gavarres mountains visiting with Joan Botey, a well known cork harvester in Spain. We drove up mountain roads to one of two very old homes he maintains. The first was from the 13th century where we were greeted with a wonderful breakfast of pork, sausage, toast that you rubbed with fresh cut tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil and sea salt, and yes, home-made sangria. We have migrated to wine with breakfast, lunch and dinner - the trifecta!. This cork forest was somewhat different from what we had observed in other regions of Spain. Here the trees were interspersed with other trees, no ladders were used due to the steep terrain and the actual axes that the harvesters used were smaller because they had to work in smaller spaces.  The harvest was every 12 to 14 years in Catalonia as opposed to 9 or 10 years in other regions.  Also, the harvesters were either Mor...

Sunday was a travel day.  After breakfast at 6:00 am we left our hotel to go to the train station in Seville.  We boarded the Renfe, or fast train (200 mph) for the 5 1/2 hour trip to Barcelona.  After a short layover at the Barcelona train station we transferred to another fast train (120 mph) to take us to Girona. We rested at the hotel, went to the pool and then to dinner in the small town of Monells where we were given the 10 Commandments of Wine at dinner.                The Ten Commandments of Wine I.  You'll love the wine above all things. II.  Swear to drink it in the summer and the winter. III.  Sanctify wineries. IV.  Honor thy red and thy white. V.  Do not have a snack with less than 3 liters. VI.  May it never it be your destiny to mix water and wine. VII.  Do not steal a bottle or wine bag that is empty or broken. VIII.  Never mutter or lie with...

After a day that we believed could not be topped - wow!  We took a two hour drive to the historic city of Ronda - a city we had visited in 2002. Ronda is one if the most beautiful cities in Spain - beautiful mountains, deep gorges and magnificent bridges and a beautifully maintained historic bull ring.  We had a 1 1/2 hour walking tour of the city and historic sites.  Unlike when we were there in 2002 when the temperature was over 100°, the weather was warm but comfortable. Over lunch and siesta time, we visited the Ramos-Paul winery, the most beautiful winery we have ever seen.   Pilar Martinez-Mejias and Nane Ramos-Paul, the husband and wife owners, were masters at making our group of 10 feel like we were not just a tour group but personal friends visiting for the day.   Their home was beautiful.  Sixty five families help them with harvesting and making the wine yet we were wined, dined, and entertained by just this lo...