They’ve had a fiesta here in Onati and I don’t mean the small hatchback by Ford either. For the last two nights, we’ve been treated to live and recorded music from the town below. Firstly till 5am on Saturday, then this morning they were still going at 7am. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t put me in a great mood for todays outing, a tour of and wine tasting in, Bodega Ysios, whose building was designed by the Spanish architect, Calatrava.

To get there however, involved a trip round Vitoria Gasteiz. This is already on our ‘grumpy’ list from the time our sat nav took us through the suburbs. Today was doubly complicated by the running of the Vitoria marathon and subsequent road blocks. Sheila (our female voice from Oz) knew nothing of this of course and insisted on trying to lead us back to yet another policeman waving us away. I’m really not sure how, but we eventually got back to the ring road and on our way to Laguardia.

The bodega is exceptional, unlike any building I’ve seen. It suits it’s position perfectly.

The ‘tour’ consists of an explanation about the wine making process and the choice of barrels, which takes place in the hall you can see above. Afterwards we had the chance to sample two red wines, which was a little lost on me as I don’t really like red wine and I could only have a small mouthful of each as I was driving.

Nevertheless, it was a really enjoyable day and I’d recommend a visit just to see this remarkable building. We made our way back here with the aid of Sheila and no wrong turns. I even found an easier way into Onati. Time for bed now….and no loud lullabys…