Our Blog - Wine Tasting and Pont del Diable, Spain

We started our day with a wine tour and tasting at a winery called "Avgvstvs Forvm" (Romans didn't distinguish V from U in writing, so this would be Augustus Forum for us). But it wasn't just wine, since they also make vinegars at this vineyard. It had just rained quite a bit the day before so we didn't venture into the fields, but he did explain a little about the property. It is an interesting climate there, since they are very close to Mediterranean and the winds from the water take away some of the moisture and, depending on the time of year, brings cool or warm breezes. As you can imagine from the name, the various plots are named for famous Romans.

We headed into the first room, which is where the initial processing happens. He explained how both their wines and their vinegars start with the same wine base, which includes a bit of time in the steel tanks.

The red wines get aged in these 300 liter French oak barrels.

He explained the line to us. There are 3 main vinegars, made from different grapes: Merlot, Chardonnay, and Cabernet. The process starts with the wine base and goes through an artisanal acidification process. The concrete eggs were a bit interesting. He was explaining how the concrete has the same polarity to the molecules in the liquid, which means that the liquid molecules are continually "repelling" themselves away from the concrete, naturally "stirring" the liquid.

Once the wine base is changed into vinegar, then it either gets bottled (the Merlot), or goes into oak barrels. The Chardonnay vinegar ages for 3 years in new oak barrels and the Cabernet vinegar spends 8 years in old oak barrels. We did a vinegar tasting there, doing just a drop of each vinegar on the back of our hands. It was interesting because the vinegars are not exceedingly strong, but each had a nice balance of sweet and acid. What is really nice about this specific winery is that their website has a section devoted to recipes that explain how to use the vinegars in various different ways, like Marinated anchovies with pomegranate using the Chardonnay vinegar.

They have a very nice setup for the wine tasting! We tasted 4 different wines: a young white, a chardonnay, a rosé, and a red.

Lucy got to join us, but had to be in her backpack for the tour due to regulations. She wasn't too upset since she got treats the whole time!

From there, we headed to the Pont del Diable Bridge (Devil's Bridge). It is a part of a long aqueduct used to supply the city of Tarragona with water from the Francolí River. The water traveled more than 10 kilometers through a network of conduits and aqueducts of varying sizes. This portion, the Les Ferreres aqueduct, is 217 meters long and nearly 2 meters wide, reaching a maximum height of 27 meters in the middle. The upper tier has 25 arches, and the lower tier of 11. The structure was built in the 1st century AD and one interesting point is that the large stones are stacked without mortar to form the two tiers of arches. We did a bit of walking around to get nice views of it from various angles.

You can hike up to the top and actually walk across the aqueduct! Lucy and I just ventured a few feet in ....