Castilla-La Mancha

Here again is another post that should have been written a while ago after Jose and I spent a weekend visiting the centrally located autonomous community, Castilla-La Mancha. This part of Spain is famous for being the setting of Cervantes' novel, Don Quixote. It is quite flat and the drive was a bit repetitive since we traveled over a lot of plateaus and plains to arrive in Valdepeñas where we spent the night.

The town plaza in Valdepeñas

This region in Spain is famous for its wineries so of course we had to take a tour complete with tasting while we were there. The ArUspide bodega that we visited offered a very interesting look inside both the history and the process of making wine, topped off with quite a few samples.

They even had a museum.

One of the things that I remember thinking was very interesting was the fact that people would purchase entire barrels of wine when they were filled, knowing full well that they wouldn't be ready to drink for a while. Often times these people would buy them for future weddings or group events like corporate dinners. They had the names written already on the barrels in the wine cellar. They also talked about the importance of the kind of cork needed for different kinds of wine.

Inside the wine cellar.

After leaving Valdepeñas we decided to visit the famous Campo de Criptana which is where you can see the emblematic windmills that dot the landscape throughout this region up close and personal. This is also the site of the famous battle that the Quixote character has with a windmill.

This was an especially interesting stop to me since I had taken an entire semester long class about Don Quixote just recently. The windmills are well preserved and made for great pictures.