August 31, 2023 Breakfast - French Toast Lunch - picnic by the Scallop church on Toxe Island Dinner - Tomato Salad and Leftover fish with rice

 August 31, 2023 Breakfast - French Toast  Lunch - picnic by the Scallop church on Toxe Island Dinner - Tomato Salad and Leftover fish with rice 

We awakened at 9:00 after a restless night to a new beautiful sunny day.

We both showered and dressed and then Suzette made French Toast with the dark raisin bread we bought at the market yesterday. It is not like raisin bread in the US with scattered raisins. This bread is at least half raisins.

Suzette served it with melted bitter orange marmalade as a sauce and yogurt and the excess batter cooked into scrambled eggs.  I loved it with a cup of Earl Grey tea. Suzette drank coffee.

After breakfast we packed our picnic basket with three cheeses, the pork Loma we bought yesterday, several slices of bread, butter, and an apple.

At 11:00 we drove south and soon came to a property owned by the world famous Torres wine dynasty.  We inquired if we could taste and were told they were in the middle of harvest and closed to the public.  We then drove to a large winery named Paco and Lola.  The assistant at the front desk scheduled us for a 4:00 wine tasting in Spanish and, more importantly, called two other wineries to schedule us for wine tastings tomorrow.

We also bought a chilled bottle of rose’ made from the Mencia grape.

We then drove further south to O Grove that is located on the next peninsular south of Cambados. It is another beach town, but it has a rather large island lying next to it that is very high end with five star hotels, large houses, many parks, and a golf course.

We stopped in O Grove at a supermarket and bought cups and paper napkins, and milk, orange juice, and butter.

We parked next to a Central Park across the street from the convention center and museum. The park was well shaded so we carried our picnic basket to a shaded bench near a small chapel covered with scallop shells with a view of the ocean.

We ate a pleasant picnic lunch of cured pork, cheeses, bread and butter, and apple slices.

We then investigated the chapel. It seems it was falling into disrepair due the elements when a rich donor suggesting protecting the exterior by encasing it in scallop shells.

A Portuguese couple helped translate the Galician explanation.

After lunch as we walked back to the car we saw a bronze statute of a burro in the park. Apparently it celebrated the wild burrows that used to populate the island.

We had a bit of time before our 4:00 tasting at Paso and allow winery, so we drove to one of the branches around the island and Suzette walked on the beach and I walked t the beach. It was a beautiful rather isolated beach.

We then drove back to Paco and Lola winery for the 4:00 wine tasting.

The wine tasting was in Spanish but the lady gibbing the tour spoke English, so she translated much of the commentary into English and translated our questions into Spanish for the Spanish speakers and then answered them.

Pico and Lola won a second prize for its Prime wine in Cambados in 2033 so it makes very good wines.  We tasted four, including a Heritage wine that was aged in French oak that was very elegant.but obviously made to compete in France and the U.S. against other oaked white wines.  We bought a bottle of Prime, the silver medal winner and drove back to the apartment.

Our tasting leader beside a bottle of Prime.

Most wineries have a similar strategy, they oick all the grapes and separate the mature grapes for the better wines and then process the less mature grapes into a wine that is called joven.  For example Paco and Lolla ferments the grapes for its joven wines only 12 days and then bottles them. The result is a strongly acidic wine that explodes in your mouth.  The joven wine is popular with local customers who drink it with salted seafood dishes because the two complement each other.

The more aged wines are premium wines that are sold for higher prices to wine snobs and foreigners like us.

When we returned to the apartment Suzette made a four tomato salad on a bed of lettuce with an olive oil, tomato juice, and sherry vinegar dressing, which was our first course for dinner.  We only ate 1/2 of the salad so remainder will be eaten in another meal.

Suzette then combined some of the PPI rice she made with the lobster broth with the leftover rice and lobster and the leftover hake and sole from last night’s dinner.

We did not eat until 9:30 or 10:00 as the sun was setting, at the table and chairs on our balcony.

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