| Baco would be happy in Otur |
| One would be able to get drunk every day Hill the end of the world, even if another millennium was yet to come. If the end of the world arrived earlier, maybe then half of the bottles of wine would still remain full. They would not be vulgar drunkenness of cheap wine but one could wait for death to come among blue dreams and transported to a magic and dream-like word to where only good wine can transport. Alvaro Garcia’s wine cellar, from ”Casa Consuelo” in Otur is a kind of God Bacon’s cave where one can get drunk just by looking at it. Just by having a look at the bottle labels, one can realize that we are into the bowels of the Spanish wine tradition. |
| A little cast iron door is the entrance to the cellar that is considered the most important particular wine cellar in Spain, not only for the number of bottles that it has but also for its selection and quality. Everything there is red wine. Most of it is from “La Rioja”, the great Spanish wine, although there is also wine from “Ribera del Duero” and from the “Priorato”. |
|
| Alvaro Garcia explains that the cellar has 13.800 bottles, and that this is an easy number to remember because it is an “alive collection” that is constantly renovated and treated with care so that the wine is always at the ideal temperature, kept from any climate changes outside. |
| There are a large number of bottles from the last century in this collection. Some of them are unrepeatable and impossible to find anywhere, for example two bottles of vintage from 1890 from “Lopez Heredia”. They come with a guarantee letter from the wine producer in which he certifies that they belong to the first vintage that his grandfather, the founder of the cellar, bottled in 1890. |
| Although it is something you cannot find in the market, Alvaro Garcia got to know that the price of each bottle could be estimated at 727 €. There are also bottles from the same year as well as from the last year of the last century that can be seen and touched but not taste. Some of them are “Ribera Alta”, “Marques de Riscal” and “Bordon”. |
|
| The cellar is a nice place to look at and get enchanted in front of the two bottles of “Vega Sicilia” that Álvaro García describes as “the best wine he has ever tasted in his life”, so he seems to agree with the fame this wine has. “We have bottles of wine of the entire vintage that “Vega Sicilia” produced from the year 1917 to our days, although there is a lack of years in which they did not bottle because they do not do it if the vintage is not excellent. This is one of the reasons why if a “sommelier” were interested in having one of these bottles with his meal, he would have to pay over 180 €. But Álvaro García’s interest in the accredited brand goes beyond the Castilian earth and he also has a good amount of the wine elaborated with raisins that “Vega Sicilia” produces in Hungary. “Anyway, he explains, “the most esteemed wine that we have is this “L. Ermita”, of which we have plenty”. |
| Another curiosity of the house is the department that is destinated to the bottles that have their respective labels dedicated and signed by some famous people who visited the cellar. Some of this people are: Nobel awarded Severo Ochoa, Isabel Pantoja, Victor Manuel, Fraga Iribarne, Bebeto, Ramón Mendoza, the group “Mecano” and the president of “La Rioja” regulator board. |
|
| But the cellar is only a small part with 13.800 selected bottles. Other 30.000 bottles of “Rioja” are piled up in the store for the most demanding customers to make use of the vintage and year they wish from each brand; a whim they will be able to satisfy there. And there is still another section, the one dedicated to the collection bottles, where you can find the most selected wine from “La Rioja” from the end of the century till our days, including the vintage on the occasion of the Centenaries of “the eleven most renowned cellars in the world”. |
| Although Álvaro García admits that the collection could reach the amount of 240 € the bottles do not seem to be destinated to leave the gloomy walls of the cellar, but their destination is the exchange, always with the purpose of extending the collection with new acquisitions. “That is exactly the reason why we have lots of bottles of each vintage and brand, because that allows us to exchange with collectors from all over Spain”, explains the hotelier from Valdés, who has a detailed catalogue of each example of a collection that grows every day. |
| “We are incorporating french wines and all the new wines that are being produced, even from Argentina and Chile, because we want the cellar to become not only the “Rioja Sanctuary” but also the sanctuary with the largest number of vintage wines from anywhere in the world”, concludes the cellar owner from Otur having the last drop of wine. |
| La Nueva España - Jorge Jardón - 22 de Mayo de 1999 |
