Aug 11, 2009, 14:37 GMT
Olite, Spain - Cool, fruity and light, the wine tastes surprisingly good considering it's free. At the Bodegas Irache in the northern Spanish region of Navarre, anyone can partake of the Fuente del Vino, or Wine Fountain. All you have to do is turn the stainless steel tap in the old wall of the adjacent monastery, and out comes red wine.
Up to 2,000 litres of wine a month is estimated to flow through the tap during the hiking season. The bodega lies on the historic Way of St James, and Christian pilgrims as far back as the 12th century have known the part of the route passing through Navarre as the 'land of good bread and good wine.'
Just outside the town of Estella, two very different routes cross: the old Way of St James and Navarre's young Ruta del Vino, or Wine Route. The region's wines are well known in Spain, and a Navarre wine was served at the 2004 wedding of Spanish Crown Prince Felipe and Letizia Ortiz. A Chardonnay Coleccion 125, it came from the Bodegas Julian Chivite, one of the region's oldest wineries.
The Chivite family has been producing wine since 1647. Today it can hardly satisfy demand for the 'wedding Chardonnay.'
There are more than 120 large bodegas in Navarre, and tourists can visit more than 20 of them on the Ruta del Vino. Most are located around the small town of Olite. A young woman by the name of Adriana Ochoa runs the Bodegas Ochoa. It produces nearly a million bottles of wine a year.
'Yes, it's definitely a trend. About 50 per cent of the winemakers in Navarre now are women,' noted Ochoa, who took over the business from her father. White wines have a soul, she said, and red wines a personality to be discovered. As Ochoa sees it, women may have special talents as winemakers.
At the Bodega Tandem, a woman and man have joined forces with the aim of producing elegant and complex red and rose wines. She makes the wine while he takes care of the finances and marketing. This bodega, like many others, offers little in the way of nostalgia, however. Its architecture and equipment are modern. Everything - the steel, computers, cement and concrete - is bright and shiny.
Wine lovers see no nooks filled with patina-encrusted bottles of wine at Bodega Tandem. The buildings there are cool, modern and sober-looking.
The romantic moments of a Navarre tour are provided by Olite itself. Situated some 40 kilometres south of Pamplona and with fewer than 4,000 inhabitants, it was the seat of the medieval kingdom of Navarre. The Palacio Real still dominates the townscape. With its small crenelated towers and bays, it resembles a giant toy castle.
Olite also has a winery, the Bodegas Vega del Castillo, where townsfolk supply themselves mainly with table wine. They do so at a facility that is remarkably similar to a petrol station pump. First they choose the kind of wine they want, then they set the amount and pump the wine out of a nozzle into canisters they have brought.
A litre of Bodegas Vega del Castillo's Rosado costs exactly one euro (1.44 dollars), and a litre of its red wine from the Tempranillo grape costs 1.15 euros - considerably less expensive than petrol.
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