J A V I E R R E V E R T E

T H E D R E A Mof

The dream of Ramón Bilbao

J A V I E R R E V E R T E

This book is not for sale.

PUBLISHED BY: Ramón Bilbao Winery.PUBLISHER: Ramón Bilbao Winery.EDITORIAL TEAM: Carmen Giné, Rodolfo Bastida, Carmen Bielsa and Clara Isabel Haba.AUTHOR: Javier Reverte.COORDINATION: Ramón Bilbao Winery Marketing Team.ART, LAYOUT AND FRONT COVER: Mi Abuela No Lo Entiende. ILLUSTRATIONS: Alex Ferreiro.DOCUMENTALIST: José Luis Gómez Urdáñez.

LEGAL NOTICE: All rights reserved. Except as specifically agreed in writing, and subject to the civil or criminal actions and the corresponding compensation for damages, the following acts are prohibited: (1) the copyright work may not be reproduced, distributed, communicated to the public, or transformed, in relation to the work as a whole or any part of it, either directly or indirectly; (2) the protected design may not be used by any third party; such use shall cover, in particular, the making, offering, putting on the market, importing, exporting, or using of a product in which the design is incorporated or to which it is applied, or stocking such a product for those purposes.

© Javier Reverte

© Bodegas Ramón Bilbao S.A. 2018 Avda Santo Domingo, 34 36200 – Haro (La Rioja)

FIRST EDITION: JUNIO 2018. ISBN: 13-978-84-09-01944-1.LEGAL DEPOSIT: LR-619-2018.

PRINTED IN SPAIN

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Foreword and acknowledgements

R O D O L F O B A S T I D A

Bringing together in this small book you are currently holding elements and words such as "legend", "entrepreneur", "dreams", history", "avant-garde", "exploration" or “wine” has been no easy task. This project is the culmination of months of hard work involving over a dozen people which has f inally seen the light of day.

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"The Dream of Ramón Bilbao" is the result of personal inquisitiveness, unsatisf ied curiosity and ultimately of a job well-done. Ramón Bilbao is today one of the leading brands in the national wine sector, a brand whose origins are unknown to many, despite being just less than a hundred years old and being launched in the 1920s in La Rioja.

Knowing our history is as vital as knowing our present and continuing to build our future. Ramón Bilbao was a pioneer with an inquisitive mind who arrived in the heart of what today is known as the Rioja Alta and who channelled his countless concerns and efforts through wine. This book aims to serve as a tribute to a visionary who just less than 100 years ago decided to begin a journey which changed everything; a return to the origins of the man who started a legend whose epilogue is still far from being written.

Learning more about the founder of Ramón Bilbao Winery required highly demanding in-depth work to put into words the story of who he really was and how he embarked on an entrepreneurial venture which we are incredibly proud of today. For this reason, I would here like to thank José Luis Gómez Urdáñez for his untiring documentation work and also Félix Prieto, grandson of Ramón Bilbao, his wife, Isabel Abrisqueta, and their sons, Mikel, Iñaki and Javier, whose testimonies were vital to discover episodes from Ramón's life, his visionary entrepreneurial character and the ins and outs of a passionate unknown life.

Anecdotes and real stories which were essential to construct this work, in which Reinaldo Pozo, Mari Carmen Irazola, María Jesús Ezquerra, Carlos V. Hernaez and Paula Zuñiga have also participated.

Of course, my eternal gratitude to one of the most relevant authors in contemporary Spanish literature, Javier Reverte, relentless traveller and writer, whose prose has been a key element in embodying in this one book the journey began by Ramón Bilbao to believe and create a unique one-of-a-kind wine whose legacy we currently aim to continue.

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Javier is a man who shares with Ramón Bilbao (the man and the brand) a set of values and attributes: an inquisitive honest spontaneous and brave mind, which in the following pages will enable us to look at life with different eyes, to look for new horizons, to enjoy our spirit of adventure.

Lastly, I would not want to forget to emphasize or remind you of the f igure of a person who always believed in our wine and who in 1999 decided to get behind a business project which today is more relevant than ever: Don Emilio Restoy Zamora, tireless explorer of new challenges, heir of an extraordinary project, a man who is tremendously inspiring and whose legacy is alive today more than ever, whose dreams and spirit are very present in this book.

A story, a mixture of fantasy and reality, legend and history, which will enable us to discover how by changing how we look at life, life itself changes. Our journey begins here.

Rodolfo BastidaCEO Ramón Bilbao Winery

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amón moved away from the neatly arranged rows of wooden boxes

and barrels in the enormous warehouse of the outskirts of Haro. All were ready to be loaded onto the carts that would

The dream of Ramón Bilbao

J A V I E R R E V E R T E

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distribute them to dozens of different destinations. Taken to Bilbao, and from there to ports in France, principally Bordeaux, on the Garonne estuary, or otherwise deposited in sheds near the station, from where they would be sent to other regions in the north of Spain, especially the Basque Country. These boxes were the expression of Ramón’s flourishing glory, the finest of all his adventures, the much yearned for goal over so many years of care and sleepless nights. His name was displayed on each box: Ramón Bilbao. The boxes contained the same miraculous produce to which he had devoted the latter years of his life and for which he had strived so hard: wine.

Despite the size of the warehouse, the fragrance emanating from the barrels invaded the air. It was an aroma which intermingled minerals, flowers, fruits and spices… the deep smell of purest nature, in short, innermost Earth. It might not have been intoxicating, but it did raise the spirits, giving a shot of vitality to the blood, associating the scene with the world’s essence, the very roots of existence. In such a way that, as the poets had mused over the centuries, wine might be something sacred, perhaps the closest relative to nectar, the legendary drink of the gods of Antiquity. The ghost of Bacchus might have been lurking in the corners of that enormous warehouse in Rioja. And along with him, the ghosts of other vestal virgins, muses, and playful fauns.

Ramón tried to unravel the significance of the miracle. What was the strange process which culminated in that type of red liquid? It all started with an old and ugly trunk buried in the earth which grew branches and leaves from under which, around early summer, rows of acidic fruit dangled, ripening under the

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powerful sun. By and by, the fruit would acquire a sweet taste and, when crushed inside a barrel, a juice was released which would start to ferment naturally until producing that red liquid called wine. At that moment, whoever drank it might feel like a hero of old, one of those who fought the very gods themselves on the fields of Troy. What arcane mystery did the miracle entail?

Yes, the prodigy of wine. And now Ramón had that miraculous red liquid before his eyes, ready to go far and delight the souls and taste buds of countless unknown men and women.

Ramón thought himself a realistic fellow, fact-friendly and not much given to fantasy. But he was an inveterate entrepreneur at the same time, never content to settle for things as they are, who thought almost everything in life was susceptible to transformation. And that sufficient willpower, boldness, imagination, and perhaps a little luck, could help open up new paths of existence.

All of these qualities —boldness, effort, creativity, and an entrepreneurial spirit— were fundamental for getting involved in an activity such as winemaking. Because no reality is born from mere fantasy, and everything susceptible of being created requires a strong dose of spirit, struggle, and inventiveness.

And wine was, above all, an act of creation. Ramón kept asking himself “How can it be that, a soul-intoxicating, will-fortifying liquid can come from a fruit born of a stubby, ugly plant?” And the formula was clear: by believing, by working hard, without second thoughts, and being open to utopia. Ramón was made for wine, because he brought together all of these qualities and had the nature of those who occupy themselves with that miraculous

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produce, born of the earth, and touched perhaps by the invisible hand of the gods of today and yesteryear.

How much work had it taken him to get this far? The lines of donkey and mule driven carts were waiting outside, held back by the muleteers. The young warehouse lads awaited the order to start loading the boxes of bottles and barrels. Soon they would depart from Haro to the four points of the compass. Roads lay open ahead, and in some cases, terrible days of travel before destinations were reached, with hours of exhausting marches over mountain routes and paths, often lashed by the rain and cold of the coming winter. Despite it all, fortune smiled on Ramón Bilbao’s enterprise. There was no turning back. Prosperity was there, within reach. And he could touch the future, a future Ramón had forged for himself with tenacity and struggle.

Just past the age of forty, Ramón could already cherish success.

But there was something else, something which encouraged him to continue his work and not let-up : the awareness that there was still much to be done, and that he ought to fulfil other long-standing desires, like finding the way to produce the very best wine; and enriching the ones he already produced, endowing them with greater appeal and captivating fragrances. There was still a wide margin for fantasy and imagination. For Ramón’s life to carry on being an exciting terrain, never abandoning himself to the sweet taste of success.

Ramón remembered something he had read during his youth in a book whose title he had forgotten: “The only obligation man has on this earth, is to make his dreams come true”.

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It was a splendid November morning, with a limpid sky, radiant sunshine and cold air, close to midday. Ramón went to the office and walked out onto the balcony, into the fresh air, where he sat down on his big, comfortable and springy armchair. That old piece of furniture was almost a symbol; it was his favourite place for thinking, gazing at the sky, and losing himself in fantasies on the highroads of utopia. All of his employees and relatives referred to the armchair as “Don Ramón’s throne”. On that chair of honour, Ramón felt happy in his own kingdom.

And from there, a few moments later, he would see the carts leaving the warehouse, heading out into the world. His name would travel beyond Rioja’s frontiers. Wasn’t that another reason for pride?

It was a little more than a month since the farmhands had finished harvesting the grapes, collecting bunches cut with scissors and the blades of billhooks. After the fruit had been taken to the cellar in receptacles where up to seventy kilograms of grapes could be transported by horse, the annual harvest was finally leaving his cellars and heading out to market. Those were the youngest wines, along with the first bottles of the aged produce which had been maturing in barrels.

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ews of Ramón Bilbao’s life and adventures have reached us in fragments, many by the

traditional and ancient system of word of mouth, with little written

down or backed up by reliable documents. This is only natural: self-made men leave a wayward

trail as they go, one which can only be reliably confirmed when their

path has transcended personal vicissitudes to reach that category we normally call exemplary. At any rate, let us trust the great artists they are and pay attention, in this as on other occasions, to the master John Ford and the famous quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “In the West, between the truth and legend, we choose legend”. And there is something of the epic, in the life and adventures of our man.

So to approach Ramón Bilbao, we have no choice but to put together his legendary existence from the veracity of some biographical facts and, from there, to gradually weave together the legendary tale of his adventures, his zealous and finally prosperous path from nothing to the fulfilment of his desires, from his spirited personal effort to his achievement of his aspirations.

This is the story of that journey through life and dreams. For at the end of the day, are dreams not a part of life too?

Here is where the journey begins.

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amón Bilbao Murga was born in Etxevarri, a town today absorbed by Bilbao, in the last third of the 19th century. His family wasn’t poor but neither did they live in plenty,

because back then, very few had much wealth so to speak. In Spain, a country sunk in the depths of despair - where the death throes of its once powerful overseas empire could still be felt - the centuries old and deep rooted, widespread poverty still tarnished society.

The population of Etxevarri mainly devoted its activities to fishing, though at the same time there were signs of a certain prosperity with the expanding iron and steel industry This was centred in the towns of the left bank of the estuary of Bilbao, which already showed evidence of its modernizing vocation. The steel of ships was replacing that of fish hooks and the Basque Country, and especially the towns and villages around Bilbao, had already become the de facto spearhead of Spanish industrialization.

From his youth, Ramón Bilbao would go on the so-called “blood trams” —a covered horse drawn wagon— to the gods of Bilbao’s Arriaga theatre, becoming an assiduous spectator. Not much later, in 1897, he would be one of the pioneers of Basque

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cinephiles, when the first cinema theatres started opening in Spain’s main cities, with Bilbao among them. Cinema started feeding the terrain of Ramon’s dreams in the same way theatre had before: on the big screen which opened before his eyes, Ramón reincarnated himself into the lives of others, and discovered an exciting world. Like any other cinema lover, Ramón lived out the adventures, feats and misfortunes of the protagonists of the silver screen in his own flesh. He rode the prairies of the American West, crossed jungles full of wild animals, hunted whales in boreal and austral seas, played the pirate, and traversed deserts… Years later, Ramón would often think that, had he not dedicated his life to wine, he would have devoted it to adventure, at sea and in the deserts and jungles of the planet.

Maybe because, deep down, every entrepreneur hides the spirit of an adventurous child in his soul.

Reading too, and especially travel literature, opened up vistas in the terrain of his fantasies. Ramón especially liked books dealing with scientific subjects, and hence it is hardly surprising he became one of Jules Verne’s most passionate readers. When the first Spanish edition of Around the World in 80 Days appeared, Ramón was fourteen years old, and read the copy he borrowed from the town library at least four times. That book contained many of the aspirations Ramón planned for his own life: adventure, an enterprising spirit, new horizons… And in the extravagant Phileas Fogg, Ramón saw an ideal in the selfless, curious, risk-taking gentleman endowed with great perseverance.

Among the journeys of Verne’s character, Ramón felt a special connection with that to India. The universe of mysteries and

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spiritual life seemed the most suggestive of all. To begin, Ramón didn’t even notice, in his own particular admiration, that the world of wine might share a curious similarity to Indian culture, with its mysticism, secrets, subtle liturgy, and enigmatic tradition of poetry … But Ramón saw the connection when, through one of the educational magazines he found so appealing, he discovered that the origin of the drink was, according to experts, in the East, in the lands of Assyria; and that the first written text in which wine was mentioned was the one narrating the travels of Gilgamesh, the mythical hero, to the distant and exotic lands of Asia. Might the origin of wine lie in remote India, and might it have made its way from there, in ancient times, to the European continent? Could it have been an Indian holy man who revealed to the Assyrian hero the arcane formula of extracting juice from grapes to transform it into the miraculous liquid that had accompanied humankind for so many centuries?

Besides the utopian longings that cinema and literature encouraged in his spirit, Ramón deeply admired one of his siblings, his only brother, whose name has since been forgotten and who, as a young man, had left Spain to live in England. In a certain way, he was an example for the young Ramón to follow. For he had embraced risk, was hungry to see the world, had a passion for the unforeseeable, along with the desire not to lead a humdrum life.

As time went by, when Ramón had already established himself in Rioja, he lost contact with his travelling brother and, on many occasions, would wonder where he might be, whether he was alive, if he had made his fortune... Ramón would have liked to have written to his brother to tell him about his own

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success, sharing with him the emotion that filled him as he saw his ambitions become reality over the years.

The last letter he had written to his brother, years before, had not only gone unanswered, but had been returned by post with a note on the envelope saying the recipient could no longer be found at the address. Ramón never heard from him again. But he never lost hope that one day a missive might arrive announcing an imminent visit.

There was not much room to grow for an audacious soul like Ramon’s in Etxevarri, one with the desire to globetrot like in the latest adventure of Phileas Fogg. Despite having received only a primary education, and lacking any capital to set up a business of his own, Ramón showed no hesitation in working long hours each day in order to save the money that would allow him to forge his own entrepreneurial path one day.

For the time being, Ramón looked for a job in a city cafe. There he worked long days, saving the lion’s share of his salary for the future. In those days of youth, Ramón was already an exception among the boys his age, for he rarely spent money on anything other than theatre plays and cinema sessions. He knew that for any future undertaking, he would require a small sum of capital to start up. And he was more than willing to procure it himself so he could get on his way.

There couldn’t have been much room in Bilbao for Ramón’s aspirations as an ambitious entrepreneurial young man to come true. His body and soul cried out for effort and struggle and opportunities which were a match for his passion. Possibly encouraged by a maternal uncle who lived in the town, Ramón

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decided to devote himself to the wine, grain and agricultural trades in Anguciana, a small town in Rioja, less than five kilometres from Haro. Back then, many young Basque men, out to make their fortune, moved to La Rioja, seeing in the land there, the promise of a better life.

However, before setting himself up in Anguciana, Ramón’s uncle died and Ramón subsequently married his uncle’s widow, Andresa. They soon had their first child, Felisa. Not much later, in 1899, Ramón moved his business back to the town of Haro, and in 1914, he settled in Haro with his family once and for all, also moving his warehouse there.

Andresa, a native Basque speaker, was eleven years Ramón’s senior and had two children from her previous marriage, Benita and José. She would go on to have three more with Ramón: Felisa, Enrique and Rosa. When the family permanently settled in Haro, Ramón bought a spacious house at number 69, Marqués de Francos street, next to his warehouse at number 67. From the very beginning, a sign hung outside with the name “Ramón Bilbao” in bold letters, recalls Félix, his only living grandchild. Later on, Benita Murga, Ramón’s stepchild, went to live with her husband at number 71 on the same street.

La Rioja was, and still is, a rich farming region, above all specialising in the cultivation of grapes and legumes, with spacious fertile plains and excellent soil, blessed by mild winters and cool summers, where the rivers Ebro and Tirón run placidly on. Already back then, Haro, the capital of the province, enjoyed a higher standard of living than most other towns in a country impoverished by vacuous colonial ventures, cloistered in an almost

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medieval system of government, and ruined by an economic order which was still stuck in the past.

One example will serve to illustrate what dazzling Rioja signified back then in the gloomy Spanish landscape: in 1877, Haro became one of the first Spanish towns, along with Jerez de la Frontera, to have public electric lighting, very shortly after London and Paris. There is a saying from back then which still fills the town inhabitants with pride, one repeated when occasion demands it: “Lights can be seen, we must be in Haro.” While Spain was a dark and sad world, the capital of Upper Rioja was a place of light and joy.

As we have already mentioned, Haro was by then the most important wine producing town in the province. And Ramón, not content with just the trade brought in by his business, began to imagine having vineyards in the outlying estates where only grain, fields of thyme and almond groves grew. Ramón almost thought he could sense the whiff of wine in the fields of crops and stubble.

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ne day, as he poked around the junk left in the warehouse by the previous owner, Ramón found an old and very big armchair. It was in good condition — albeit a

little wobbly – and was upholstered in red satin, which made it cosy and comfortable. Ramón sat down to try it, and it felt so

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comfortable, he dozed off for a minute, like a child in the arms of an affectionate adult. Ramón had pleasant dreams, and when he woke, ordered the local carpenter to clean up the chair and mend it. Then Ramón installed it in his office, next to the window so he could see the sky. Often, when his busy working day would allow it, Ramón would go upstairs and shut himself away in his office to “catch forty winks”, as he called those cat naps, dozing off as he gazed at the polished town sky. In late spring and summer, Ramón would leave the window open so that the smell of the earth and its humidity wafting up from the nearby river Ebro would fill the room. Ramón loved nature and saw it as a unique gift, perhaps the most profound reason to enjoy existence. And above all others, Ramón loved the aroma of the summer storms, the smell of the rain which brought out the visceral essence of the planet’s very being from the earth. He was ahead of his time in defence of the environment and he liked to say so to family and friends:—We are nature and if we were to damage or cause irreversible changes in her being, it would be tantamount to committing suicide. One must love the earth. We must leave it intact to our children and grandchildren.

And he would add a line attributed to the French-American naturalist, John James Audubon: “The Earth is not inherited from our forebearers, it is borrowed from our children”.

On one such afternoon, sunk in profound weariness, Ramón fell into a much deeper sleep than usual. He was assailed by a strange and exciting dream, of the kind which beg us not to wake, but to linger there for hours, entangled in its web.

Ramón saw himself as a gentleman from the late 19th century,

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with a bourgeois air, a handlebar moustache, drainpipe trousers, a dress coat, a waistcoat, ankle boots, a dark tie and a black bowler hat on his brown haired head. He was almost the perfect image of an English lord of the time.

Ramón walked out of Haro town with a small briefcase in one hand, and a stick with a silver handle in the shape of a swan’s head in the other. It was early morning, maybe Sunday, and the streets seemed deserted. Without any apparent effort, Ramón left the last town houses behind and began to ascend a gentle hill which led up towards the valleys, vegetable gardens and vineyards around which the river Ebro worked its way. In the distance, the heights of the Sierra de la Demanda stood out, where the last white traces of the final winter snow fall still sparkled. A stork watched over its nest in the bell tower of Saint Thomas church, while its mate flew over the environs in search of food for the chicks.

It was a clear, sunny, spring day and Ramón passed by chirpy forests and damp meadows bursting with flowers. The birds sang and as he walked clouds of butterflies and grasshoppers burst into the air. Dragonflies flew next to the river, and as he advanced along the riverbed, Ramón heard the splashing of wary frogs diving under water. The world seemed to smile at Ramón’s passing by. The air carried the powerful aroma of high pine forests, wild herbs and fresh mountain springs.

The images might have been taken from a calendar: images at once idyllic, serene and unreal up to a point, as if pertaining to a nature devised by a photographic artist.

The climb was neither long nor arduous, and soon Ramón

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reached the top of one of the mountains that rose before him. He sat on a rock and enjoyed taking in the scenery for a while. The mountain air caressing his skin was fine, sweet and slightly fresh. Ramón felt that this was the ideal climate a human being could ever wish for.

From above, he could see a huge valley and an enormous lagoon where it ended, pressed against the slopes of another mountain range, even higher than the one he had just climbed. The water sparkled like a precious stone, sending out iridescences of the whole spectrum like a rainbow. Ramón wondered if, instead of a lake, it might not be the sea. As the sun traversed the sky, at times it brought out the soft tones of emerald green of the water, while at others, it was the intense indigo blue or delicate red, reminiscent of Rioja wine.

With the same ease and grace he had ascended, and showing no signs at all of fatigue, Ramón made his way down the slope where he reached the sand of a large beach.

There a small, old pier stretched out into the water.

To his surprise, Ramón met a man dressed entirely in black who seemed to be waiting for him. He greeted Ramón by his name, as if he had known him for a long time. Ramón noticed a slight Italian accent when he spoke.

—Mr. Bilbao, I have been waiting for you.

All of a sudden Ramón realised he knew the man.

—Grazie Tomasso —he said.

—At your service, signore.

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The man was a sailor Ramón had met once before, he couldn’t say where. The man pointed to a gondola shaped vessel moored to the wooden pier and which was rocking gently in the water. He invited him to get on board. Without hesitation, Ramón walked down the gangway and made himself comfortable on a red upholstered seat at the stern of the boat. The boatman positioned himself on the prow, picked up a large pole, and pushed off into the lake which spread out before them.

—Where are we going Tomasso? —Ramón asked.

—To the palazzo, signore.

The swell was by now rocking the boat. Just then, looking out yonder, Ramón noticed something amazing: the water was turning dark, taking on a deep shade of plum red, with sparkles of ruby here and there. It looked like a miracle or was it a trick. Ramón now remembered the turn of phrase used by Homer when he described “the wine-dark sea”. To make sure, Ramón tried a little of the liquid, cupping his hand and scooping it up from the side of the boat.

Tomasso laughed loudly before saying:

—Yes, signore. It is wine.

And so indeed it was. What’s more, it was delicious. Ramón took another sip, this time more from pleasure than curiosity. Then he stretched himself out along the gondola seat, overcome by an enjoyable feeling of placidness. What other human being had been granted such a privilege? To sail over wine! Ramón said to himself that the ancient deities had never bestowed such a golden opportunity to anybody,. As the boat went deeper into the

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vastness of the lake, Ramón continued taking small sips, allowing a light mellowness to wash over him.

Tomasso, meanwhile, started singing a song whose lyrics Ramón could barely understand, but in which words like wine, knowledge, pleasure and camaraderie could be made out every now and then.

At the same time, a number of strange contraptions sailed across that pleasant lake: hourglasses filled with grapes instead of sand; mechanical clocks turned into boats; hot-air balloons with passenger baskets filled with bottles; and other unreal inventions and imaginary vessels all of them carrying wine. Everything seemed designed to outwit time and bear the miraculous drink as quickly as possible to every shore of the world.

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Shortly later, the sailor skilfully docked the boat at a pier covered by a long golden pergola. The gangway boards were made of hard polished teak wood. As he disembarked and got a closer look at the elegant passageway, Ramón was once more overcome by awe: the pergola was not just decorated with gold paint, but was a structure made of pure gold. Where am I? Ramon wondered. Maybe in the utopian lands of El Dorado? Soft and gentle notes from a melodious violin reached him from that unknown territory, and accompanied his footsteps, impressing a subtle harmonic rhythm on his gait. It could be said that Ramón trod the earth like the angels fly in the sky, for he seemed to be floating.

Tomasso disappeared, and two beautiful women, in silk dresses adorned with golden spangles, their heads crowned with pearl tiaras, came out to meet Ramón at the end of the pier. They offered him silver trays with bunches of dark grapes and an Empire-style cup of aged wine. Then, flanking him like two seraphs, they led him up a marble staircase. The music still enveloped his steps. Now it was reminiscent of a Verdi aria played by an orchestra, with the voices of a choir. Neither musicians nor choristers were anywhere to be seen.

At the top of the stairs, a stable boy stood waiting, holding the reins of a sprightly, jet-black Arabian horse with colourful ribbons entwined in its long stiff mane. Ramón mounted the horse with ease and went down a long path flanked by poplar grove which concealed magnificent flowers among hedges and parterres, from which he could hear the melody of the fountains. Everything seemed idyllic, as if sprung from the paintbrush of a somewhat deranged painter or kitsch movie.

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A two storey palace rose into the air at the end of the path, its walls decorated with brilliant sheets of gold, its domes sparkling with diamonds and emeralds. It was an extremely ornate building , designed with a refined command of the highest architectural wisdom, and conceived with the richest, most luxurious exigencies of ancient aesthetics. It was of classical style, albeit mixed with oriental features. Its portico faced the rising sun. The music stopped, so did the voices of the choir, and Ramón got down from the horse.

Sitting there on a golden chair at the entrance, a woman was waiting, one even more beautiful than the two guardians who had been waiting for Ramón at the pier moments before. This one wore a light tunic made of sky-blue satin and a platinum crown topped with gemstones. There was a sprinkling of golden dust over her hair and all was light around her; the majestic woman looked more like the daughter of a god than a human. She wasn’t so young, but her maturity was at that point of intensity and equilibrium in which the ladies who possess it are apt to show off the supreme degree of their beauty with confidence and satisfaction.

Ramón bowed before this queen like figure. She smiled at him, and held out her hand for him to kiss while saying in perfect sonorous Spanish:

—Welcome, noble Spanish gentleman.

Ramón left the slightest caress of his lips on the back of the woman’s hand. He wasn’t sure what to call her, so he replied:

—It’s a pleasure to meet you, worthy lady.

—I know very well what you desire —she added.

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—In that case, why not tell me? —Ramón managed to answer.

—You seek the secret of good wine, isn’t that so?

Ramón nodded.

—There is only one. And it’s the same as the secret of life. I will tell you in just a few words. But first you must promise me something.

—I am at your service and command.

—That you will tell nobody in the world, except those closest to you about what I am about to reveal.

—I promise, great lady.

The woman got up and, as she looked at the sky, her magnificent body sparkled, kissed by the rays of sunshine. She raised her arms into the air and added:

—The paths of dearly loved and well cared for wines lead to the palace of beauty, wealth and wisdom. If you stick to that rule, you will live a fortunate life. Consider those two attributes as the substance to be hidden in the intimate essence of your wine: love and care. That way, the future will be yours, my good Spanish gentleman.

Then the dream vanished all of a sudden. And Ramón came back to reality, stretching the muscles and tendons of his body, sitting on the comfortable armchair in his office, smiling proudly.

The dream might have gone, but not the feeling it had left behind. And the woman’s words kept swirling around inside his

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head. If he closed his eyes, Ramón could even recreate her tone of voice, such was the power of her presence. Only a few minutes after his dream, Ramón took the most important decision of his life: he would devote all his efforts to winemaking.

Furthermore, he was at the right place at the right time to undertake his ambitious project. Above all, he would aim for a produce fitting his own character, a wine with his own seal which would transmit his personality, and would pass on from generation to generation, establishing itself in the future with a strength derived from its quality, its singularity and its temperament. Without saying as much, Ramón aspired to everything a great artist aims to achieve: his own style.

That was his goal and he was going to fight for it over the following years.

Things were going well for Ramón, he was managing to save more money with his business every year (he almost become the owner of a flour factory at one point). But he never forgot his decision to devote himself to winemaking. And, for the first time, he bought some land – on the Casalarreina road - which he intended to turn into vineyards in the future. He aimed to produce bulk wine within a few years, like so many other small farmers in the area. But, just like his fellow entrepreneurs, Ramón hadn’t counted on a terrible enemy which had already made an appearance in vineyards in France, not so very far away: grape phylloxera.

Over and above all, one thought remained firm and latent in Ramón’s mind, for all his other projects - that of creating a nectar with his own particular stamp:bottles bearing his name onto the market, filled with a wine everybody would recognize as

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belonging to Ramón Bilbao. He owned lands with good soil —and intended on buying more— and had a small sum of capital, two warehouses, dreams to fulfil, wishes to satisfy, multiple ideas for his new venture, and even the blueprint for a cellar he would soon build. What else was missing?

Only planting vines of the best quality and then waiting for the first harvest.

We have already mentioned grape phylloxera, a pest that would play a determinant role in Ramón’s life and that of many other Rioja vintners. As the old Spanish saying goes, guns are loaded by the Devil, and something of the kind happened in 1863, when an unexpected traveller, hidden away like a stowaway, boarded ships bringing American products to the ports of Northern Europe. It was the grape phylloxera, an insect the size of a louse, of a yellowy ochre colour, which destroyed the trunks and damaged the fruit of the vine. In just a few years, the pest had spread through many parts of Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France, and had infected thousands of hectares across a large swathe of the continent, which by chance meant, among other things, a surge of prosperity for Spanish wine producers – safe for the time being from infection. Those of Rioja in particular, whose crops were sold almost entirely to France, despite being of lesser quality and more complicated fabrication were safe too.

Many farmers saw those days as a never- ending, heaven-sent bonanza, even though the pest, spreading through France, wasn’t far at all from Spain. In 1878 a Provincial Commission for the Defence Against Phylloxera was established, publishing a series of rules to prevent the spread, implementation was much more

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lax than desired, with many wine producers still creating large amounts of wine without taking the necessary precautions in their vineyards. “He who has vines, has money”, the inhabitants of Haro would say with pride. As is commonly known, too often wealth and ambition blind men, including those considered to be intelligent enough.

In 1896, the plague finally entered Spain through Navarra, though some outbreaks had already been detected in Catalonia and Andalusia a few years before. The alarm bells began ringing with the arrival of the much feared pest, which was to take less than three years to turn up in Rioja, affecting most of the plantations there, and scything down much of the prosperity the region had earlier enjoyed.

The first outbreak of the Rioja phylloxera took place in 1899, in the municipality of Sajazarra. From there, the epidemic spread very quickly. By 1902, it already covered almost the whole of Rioja. Entire vineyards were burned by the farmers most willing to put an end to the contagion, to the extent that the 80.000 hectares of vineyards planted in 1890 were reduced to less than half that number.

The disaster did not hit Ramón full on, as he had yet to start planting vines himself, though it undoubtedly damaged his grain business, as farmers saw their profits drop. All of a sudden, Haro was threatened with ceasing to be a wealthy, prosperous town as its once flourishing agricultural sector rapidly shrank. The warehouses of the young Basque entrepreneur no longer received as much merchandise as they did before and, among other things, the booming food preservation industry of the region, dating from the early 20th century, stagnated. Ramón decided to wait for a better moment to carry out his plans and fulfil his

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winemaking dreams. He had already learned that patience is one of the best weapons of the shrewd.

Ramón had no intention of abandoning his ambitious projects. One day, sitting on his “throne” in his office, he had a fleeting dream. He saw himself dressed like a farm labourer, in shirt-sleeves, rolled up corduroy trousers, a hardy pair of scissors in hand, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, as he grafted European cuttings onto rough American trunks. And then suddenly, bunches of juicy grapes started budding from the branches of the plants and Ramón squeezed them, and felt the delicate, smooth wine running through his fingers. The farmer who worked the vineyard, sweating and tired, was suddenly transformed into a kind of young Bacchus, bathed in wine and surrounded by bunches of dark-coloured grapes, a crown of laurel on his head and a choir of young vestal virgins singing hymns of praise. The scene was like a classical painting from distant Rome. But with this difference: Ramón got onto a strange bicycle that travelled inside a big hoop and, cycled with a barrel full of wine, through vineyards, to an imaginary destination.

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Once awake again, Ramón decided to take a risk and decided not to plant grapevines until the phylloxera blight had been overcome.

By then, there had been some advances in France in the fight against the devastating insect. It had been discovered that the American vine trunks were immune to the plant louse, while their leaves were not. In Europe, it was the other way around: the trunks were vulnerable to the insect but not the leaves. This set a campaign in motion whereby traditional continental grapes were to be grafted onto vines from the other side of the Atlantic. And by the beginning of the century, the phylloxera was under control in France at the price of great effort and significant expense.

The first measure taken in Rioja was an outright ban on planting of new crops and selling national vines, while at the same time, vintners were encouraged to pull up their vines and substitute them with American ones. But the Spanish character was less alert than the French in business matters, preferring quick profit over future planning. Often, the saying “bread for today, hunger for tomorrow” could be said of the region. This attitude was exacerbated by the fact that the American saplings were quite expensive. In any case, many lent deaf ears to the old Biblical warning from the Song of Songs: “They made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard I have not kept”.

Many small farmers refused to change their vines and even continued producing wines of infamous quality with phylloxera infected grapes. They had forgotten the old saying that goes “the wine is as good as the vine”, and one of the consequences was that the French stopped buying Spanish wines, focussing their purchases on new wines coming from Algeria.

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The situation even reached levels of great tension, with clashes between big and small farmers, between those in favour of replanting and those opposing it. There were demonstrations and even some riots in different towns, especially in Haro.

From that time comes the folkloric tune that people still sing in Rioja during popular festivals:

“We’re going to burnthe Haro warehouses

people are dyingfrom artificial wine”.

Nevertheless, the main wine producers, encouraged by the success of their French counterparts, and despite initial reluctance, soon ended up imposing their ideas, carrying out their replantation policy, with the smaller wine producers in tow, who ended up emulating them. In just a few years, the effort began to have an impact on Rioja’s economic recovery.

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amón had taken refuge in the warehousing business which, although profits were down owing to the general crisis in the region, had allowed him to stay afloat.

Ramón bided his time a little longer still.

By now he had bought an old truck, one of the first motorized vehicles to be seen in Rioja, with its twenty-horsepower engine, intent on modernizing his grain selling business. For the time being, he only used the novel harvester to transport agricultural produce and bulk wine from his warehouses to Bilbao and other cities in northern Spain. But his plans went further, and were much more ambitious.

Furthermore, it was anything but unusual back then to see the young Ramón Bilbao in a cap, driving overalls and goggles, racing through the streets of Haro or taking the road north, to Vizcaya, on his way to the provincial capital. Although the distance between Haro and Bilbao was less than a hundred kilometres, it was a terrible journey over broken and bumpy asphalt, often through driving rain, along a road full of curves and embankments which become almost impassable in winter.

Ramón didn’t drive his truck out of ostentation, for by nature he was inclined to be discreet. But he was passionate about anything that meant modernity or technological progress, and the new self-propelled vehicles were beginning to be one of the big revolutions of the time. Often the young Ramón would reflect on the benefits industrial progress could bring to the world of wine, and he was sure automobiles were going to play an essential part of a revolution which could already be glimpsed. Becoming a car driver in Rioja had been one of his main obsessions ever since he saw a motorized vehicle for the first time.

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Almost every time he set off on a journey, Ramón would spend a night or two in his hometown of Etxevarri, to visit friends and family. Most of them were either employees of the fisheries in the estuary, sailors on the ships leaving for the Cantabrian Sea after hake and anchovies, stevedores at the local ports or worked in the emerging steel and iron industry. While Ramón was his own boss with his own business venture, he wasn't rich but he was on the road to being well placed to become so, whereas his fellow townsmen had little chance of setting up on their own. This filled him with pride and made him even more determined to make his dreams come true. Besides, he had already overcome some very difficult episodes in his life and had suffered defeats aplenty. Also he was aware of the need to always keep up his fighting spirit.

Ramón knew, because life had taught him as much, that failure was painful, but that a stronger spirit could be born out of it, like a Phoenix rising proudly over its own ashes. Nothing confers more courage than the experience of taking part in hundreds of battles and losing a good few of them.

In those days, on the other hand, he had more free time at his disposal than in previous years, or was to have in the near future. Another hobby of his, on his days off, consisted in taking the truck, leaving Haro, and visiting the small surrounding estates he was steadily buying up, and where he would plant his future vineyards. Ramón would contemplate these plots of land, scattered around the region, like a father watching a growing child and he ended up almost knowing the delineation of every single one of them by heart.

He took special pleasure in dropping by the environs of the

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town of Ábalos, and from there on the heights of an isolated, winding country road, his gaze would scan the placid landscape that stretched out below: the greenery of the vegetable gardens and vineyards; the poplar and elm groves casting their shadow over the meanders of the river Ebro; the elegant classiness of the castle up high on Villanueva hill; the harsh barrier of the Demanda mountain range which enclosed the scenery; and, colouring the entire horizon, the earthy shine of the sandstone. That was the stone, Ramón liked to think characterized what Rioja was made of: its castles, walls, palaces, churches and hermitages, its ancestral homes, and the houses of its towns and villages, the boundaries of its vegetable gardens, and the shelters to take cover in bad weather…

On rainy days, Ramón enjoyed talking to the farmers and labourers in these shelters -constructions shaped like inverted cones - where people from the country could take refuge. And when the sun peeped out, Ramón enjoyed splashing around in the yellow mud in his rubber boots, like a kid getting dirty as a lark. He loved that fertile land which was the cradle of the miracle of wine.

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ortune seemed to smile on Ramón when the phylloxera was finally eradicated from Haro. The Vine-Producing Provincial Savings Bank launched a special credit campaign

for vintners so they could buy American vines on very favourable terms. Only five percent interest would be charged on these loans, with the onset of repayment deferred for up to five years.

Ramón knew that for those starting from scratch, there was no fortune that doesn’t begin with a loan. He owned lands and warehouses, and his eye for business had saved him at very difficult times. But he didn’t have enough vines, or the money to buy more, as they were still very expensive. So once again Ramón decided to spin the wheel of fortune and asked for a considerable loan. With his property as a guarantee and the backing of some vintner friends he bought a large batch of American vines and Rioja grafts, enough to start producing his first vineyards.

But Ramón went even further: he put aside a part of the loan to buy the first oak barrels of what would become his cellar. The idea of aged wines, rather than just sticking to the bulk business, was still simmering away inside Ramón Bilbao’s mind. A label bearing his name on the bottle still danced about in his imagination, obsessing him.

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Ramón Bilbao Wines! That was his private and secret war cry. One rainy April, he began planting his vines with love and care, as the lady of the lake in his dream had recommended, and driving the grafts onto the trunks. It would take a few months before he could see the first green leaves budding on those twigs. And another three years before he could pick the first fruit suitable for winemaking.

Before then, Ramón had a very busy year. One by one he selected the vines, almost as thoroughly and carefully as a jeweller works his gemstones and his sheets of noble metal. He prepared his fields, calculated exactly how to enrich them with the best fertilizers, especially natural manure, and measured the distance between the plants with extreme precision, so that the subsequent harvesting could be done quickly and comfortably by his farmhands ensuring the passage of horses and cartswas facilitated.

It was then that Ramón planted his vines.

Over the following months, hardly an afternoon went by in which Ramón didn’t go to watch his vines taking root and growing in the field. He would usually go after lunch. He always went alone, and looked at the plants like somebody observing a growing child, studying in detail the size of the leaves which started blooming in the spring. Sometimes he caressed one of the trunks. If anybody else had been there, they might have thought Ramón was a bit deranged.

But which artist doesn’t end up loving the work he or she carries out?

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There were times, no doubt, in which his spirits would weaken and he feared his ambitions would be cut short. But the strength of his determination always prevailed.

On one of those occasions, sitting on the armchair in his office after a hard day’s work, he was reading the biography on Jules Verne, when all of a sudden a sentence jumped out and etched itself in his mind, as if written on paper with the same force as chiselled stone. The sentence read:

“Everything a man can imagine today, other men can make real in the future”.

Ramón was instantly captivated by a sense of wonder. It was as if Verne had been thinking of someone like Ramón while writing. Everything imagined can be done, he repeated to himself. But he had to slightly correct the great author’s thought: it’s not just

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another man who can carry out an idea which the first man had, but on occasions it can be the very creator of the idea who has the capacity to make it possible himself. And so Ramón decided to change the sentence into one that would feel closer to his own nature, and which would become one of his mottos:

“Everything a man can imagine today, the same man can make real tomorrow”.

Those words provided renewed strength to Ramón’s will and filled his spirits with optimism. His heart jumped, giving an extra shot of energy to keep on fighting. If men wiser than him, like the great Jules Verne, had reached the conclusion that desire and determination could break down the doors of what was deemed to be impossible, why couldn’t Ramón do the same?

“There is no strength like the strength of the human heart”, he would say to himself over and again, especially when he felt a bit low.

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inally, the miracle occurred and one October, three years after planting the vines, Ramón had his first wine, just as he had calculated, although the bottled version would

come a few harvests later. He dedicated the first harvests to bulk wine, which he sold by the litre in his warehouses, directly to customers or else wholesale when he managed to sign a contract with more powerful vintners who needed additional wines to turn them into their own. This was a very common practice at the time among the small Rioja vintners, benefitting both modest farming families and big wine producers. The former could dispose of their surplus wine and the latter ensured they had enough per year to satisfy the growing client pool of Rioja wines.

When Ramón had his first bottles of aged wine later on, he wondered how to make them distinct when labelling them. He wasn’t a marquis or a count, nor did he possess some noble title to distinguish his brand with a grandiloquent name. His origins, of which he was very proud, were quite humble, those of a working-class man from the left side of the Bilbao estuary. He had no palace or castle or manor that he could paint as a background for the label, in the way the French did.

So Ramón went for the easiest solution: he printed his own name, “Ramón Bilbao”, over a clear background and added a few words. This is how the labels were denominated “Ramón Bilbao” in big letters, next to some smaller ones spelling “Vintner”. Also, out of a whim, he named a part of his bottled production as “Viña Turzaballa”.

A few years later, in autumn 1926, the Madrid Gazette (equivalent to today’s Official State Gazette) publicized the

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establishment of the Regulatory Board for the Rioja Protected Designation of Origin, which gave the region a distinct rank in Spanish wine production. Ramón celebrated this as much as anyone else.

When he received his first bottle, Ramón placed it on his desk and looked at it carefully for a few minutes, sitting in front of it and pacing around with his hands clasped behind his back, never taking his eyes off the bottle. He was unable to describe his feelings about that bottle. He only knew that a deep emotion filled his soul.

He envisioned the distant day in which that first bottle would occupy a prominent spot in his cellar, in what would be a small Ramón Bilbao wines museum. Would he be there to see it, or would it be left to his descendants?

Ramón always thought the secret of his wine would not remain his exclusive property, but instead it would be passed on to future generations of his family or to whomever inherited and elevated the prestige of his brand.

Ramón Bilbao’s first barrels of aged wine were ready five years after he started producing. Even though the thrill was not the same as it was with the first crop, it still amounted to a great personal satisfaction for him: quality wines were now within his reach, he could start measuring himself against the big boys of Haro. Ramón liked the taste and degree of alcohol of the wine, and he felt slightly puzzled on seeing its colours and perceiving essences he was capable of enjoying but not of identifying to any degree of certainty. “How much life hides itself in wine!”, he would often say to himself.

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So he called a tasting specialist in and together they sought to find out, first of all, how the wines’ tonalities could be described. The expert filled the glass half full and raised it ceremoniously, placing it against the light of the window. He stared at it for a long while, then turned the receptacle, and placed it straight under the ray of sun entering the room, and then, against a shaded background.

He solemnly announced:

—A subtle picota cherry with something of claret.

Ramón listened to him quite baffled. Could a red cherry be distinguished from a picota cherry? He was still unable to tell the difference.

The process of determining the flavours took the specialist more time, care and attention to detail. He swirled the wine around, smelled it, put some drops in his throat, seemed to be about to gargle, sniffed the edge of the glass again, moved it again and then stood in silence for a while, reflecting.

Finally, he confirmed:

—A deep taste of liquorice. Also primary fragrances of plumb, fig and peach. In the secondary scents, there is a clear tendency towards the exotic and the tropical. Coconut, vanilla, sandalwood and incense predominate. On its way to becoming a Reserva, it will probably acquire hints of chocolate and a slight touch of cedar wood. I would give it ten out of ten in terms of aroma.

Ramón was more interested in the smell of his wines than the tonality. He knew that smell was the most evocative and

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mysterious of the five senses, the one with a direct access to memory and even feelings. The sense that on occasions brings out a strong feeling of nostalgia. Could anybody ever master the smells of wine and transform them to their own taste without resorting to chemical processes? That was a real challenge for the future and maybe

an unattainable one too. After all it is the earth that chooses the aromas, which are born of herbs and wildflowers.

He decided, with the help of some consummate specialists, to equip himself with an intense training in wine tasting. He ended up understanding as much about aromas, tastes and colours as the best experts in the province.

Besides this, Ramón also learned to enjoy it. He especially enjoyed receiving the sudden aroma of wine when uncorking a new bottle, submerging himself in a torrent of contrasting sensations and trying to understand the root of its essence. It was pleasing to Ramón to know that his wine had a slight taste of dried figs, that it stored an African nostalgia of sweet coconut beaches, airs of distant islands where sandalwood grew, the Lebanese coastline in the shade of cedars, and a whiff of Asian vapours like incense.

And it thrilled him to fantasize about the idea, for all that he knew it was impossible, that maybe one day he would end up possessing the arcane secrets and capacity to create the most hidden fragrances of his grapes.

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Ramón had become, furthermore, an obsessive hunter of scents. And, above all, those which nature left in her wake. He most certainly got pleasure from those sent out by the frost and intense heat, the rains and drought, those which the flowers, fruits and vegetables carried with them, and those streaming from the meadows, woods and river banks. With all of these, Ramón would become aware of the arrival of winter, the perfumed breeze of spring, the burning heat of summer, and the roaring of autumn storms.

And this made him feel very much alive and full of vigour.

If he tried to describe the seasons, he could say the winter smelled of ice and snow soaking the bare trees; spring, of the vague delicateness of wildflowers; summer of desert dust, rough and free; while autumn smelled of mushrooms and truffles impregnated by the rain.

Nor did Ramón lose the habit of resting for a while on his “throne” every so often, which he referred to privately as “the palace of dreams”. Of course, as happens to almost all of us, he would forget most of his fantasies upon waking. And in any case, almost none of them had anything to do with wine.

But one afternoon, quite unexpectedly, he was assailed by a vision in which wine was once again the protagonist of the story he was dreaming, and he himself played a vital role in the adventure. It was a lengthy dream during which he had no capacity or desire to extract himself because it was extremely pleasant. It didn’t melt away into oblivion when the landscapes and the human faces receded and his consciousness came back to reality.

Just like in some of his other visions, in this new illusion, everything happened on a journey.

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nce again, Ramón looked like a kind of Phileas Fogg figure on the road. What was he looking for? Something related to wine, of course. But it wasn’t quite clear, or

maybe he didn’t know exactly. He was wearing a similar outfit to

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the one he had while sailing the wine lake, though instead of a bowler hat this time he was wearing a top hat.

He was travelling in an open, black buggy pulled by two dapple-grey horses, sitting back in a comfortable seat, observing in distracted fashion the driver’s powerful back. On each side of him a landscape of thin white poplars rushed by and, a little further off, a river of gushing green water, maybe the familiar flow of his beloved Ebro. A blue tinted mountain range loomed above the gravel road, its summits white with flecks of snow, who knows whether or not it was the Sierra Demanda again. It was spring, like in the dream about the beautiful lady of the lake, and the sky was clear, burnished, and shaded in pale layers of blue.

The buggy reached the sea, and not much later, the large port of a big city, maybe Bilbao, although Ramón wasn’t able to tell. Many boats of various size and in different states were anchored in the bay, while others bobbed around, moored to the dock. Ramón got out of the buggy, paid the driver and walked straight to the gangway of a luxuriously decked out cruise ship which rocked from side to side like a whale at the quay. It seemed to be waiting for him.

Shortly later, the ship sailed off and disappeared into the sea, heading north. The next day it was sailing under Westminster Bridge on the Thames, in the heart of London, gliding gently over the water and docking at Blackfriars quay. As Ramón disembarked, two bobbies saluted him and a batallion of exotic looking guards, dressed in striking medieval uniforms and armed with fearsome axes, paid him tribute. Then all at once, an elegant carriage driven by black horses drove him across the city until

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they arrived at a Victorian building near Kensington Gardens. On the façades facing the park of a narrow street, the statues of two legendary and ill-fated British travellers rose into the air: David Livingstone, explorer of the centre of Africa, and Robert Scott, explorer of the Antarctic.

Ramón was received in the sober but comfortable offices of the British Royal Geographical Society by an elderly man, a lord with a large grey mutton-chop moustache. The two men sat around a fire burning in a wide fireplace with a stone hearth. Here they engaged in a relaxed and cordial conversation. To his surprise, the Basque businessman was invited by the English gentleman to share a bottle of red wine. Its label read: “Ramón Bilbao. Vintner”.

They chatted together about the Englishman’s many travels, about distant lands and faraway towns. At some point in the conversation, Ramón asked the lord:

—Tell me, if your Excellency would be so kind. Did anybody ever tell you about the elixir which contains the best flavours of wine on your travels?

The lord remained silent for a while, reflecting. Then he finally answered:

—If it exists, it’s the best kept secret there is. I have travelled around almost the whole world, and been to all five continents. I have tasted the best wines produced on this planet. At times, I asked my hosts about the formula behind its taste and flavour. But nobody could give me an exact answer.

The lord hesitated for a second.

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—Though maybe…

And then fell silent.

But Ramón insisted:

—I would like to hear your report, my lord.

—Maybe… In Varanasi, I heard about a holy man from Calcutta who knew the deepest secrets of the world’s smells. Maybe there…

After saying goodbye, Ramón went back on the same carriage and boarded the same ship which had brought him to London. This time it sailed south, back to the Continent. A few hours later —which in Ramón’s dream went by in a few seconds— they reached the French port of Le Havre. Immediately, our man took a train to Paris.

He spent the night travelling. Once again, during supper in the First Class dining car, another pleasant surprise awaited him: the bottle of wine he was offered also bore his cellar’s label. Oddly enough, both the waiter and the sommelier called him by

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his name and treated him with utmost respect while giving the impression they had known him for years.

Ramón got off at the Gare de Saint-Lazare and had lunch at an Alsatian restaurant. This time, it was no surprise at all that the red wine he was served happened to be from his Rioja vineyards.

Ramón later took the electric tram to the banks of the river, where he met a French gentleman with an upturned moustache in a crammed rococo-style office next to the Seine. This was the French Academy of Arts and Sciences. The gentleman invited him for dinner and this monsieur offered him —what else!— more wine from Ramón’s Haro cellar.

During their chat while they ate, Ramón asked his companion:

—As a scientist and, as I can see, a lover of good wine, could you tell me, monsieur, if you believe there is any other concoction in the world that contains the flavours and fragrances of wine?

The gentleman smiled and shook his head.

—I don’t think that’s possible. It would be like believing in a potion that could make the person you love reciprocate.

—And do you think, monsieur, that one day a formula could be devised to that end?

—I don’t think so. But I heard that in Calcutta…

He hesitated.

—Please, monsieur, do finish.

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—They say that in Calcutta there lives a holy man who possesses the formula, although he doesn’t seem to be willing to give it to anybody. But maybe it is just a legend.

Once again by train, Ramón travelled on this time to Turin, and from there to the Roman port of Ostia. He had time for a walk in the eternal city, and to dine on some delicious pasta with white truffles at a trattoria close to the Pantheon. Later, Ramón went for a stroll among the ruins of the Roman Forum until reaching the Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum. A beautiful full moon reigned over the solemn ruins of that glorious past.

He embarked on a ship which set sail at dawn and, a few hours later, entered the Suez Canal. A desert of golden sand which seemed never-ending stretching out on either side of the canal. The heat was oppressive. For the first time in his life, Ramón saw lines of camels, casting lengthy shadows over the dunes as they walked on in caravans bearing all kinds of produce to distant and mysterious cities. The vintner from Rioja took his binoculars and, on the hump of one of the beasts of burden, saw a wooden box which read: “Ramón Bilbao. Vintner”. His heart leapt with joy and pride on seeing that his wines were travelling along the most unlikely roads in the world. It was clear that his business, in accordance with this fantasy trip leading him through paths and oneiric lands, had already gone beyond Spain’s borders and that his name was known in places very far from La Rioja.

A few days later —which in the dream went by in a fraction of a second—, the ship docked in Bombay. Ramón was greeted by the local authorities, who regaled him as a guest of the highest

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rank. He attended banquets and parties held in his honour, and received decorations and numerous presents. He also had meetings with maharajahs, politicians, artists, diplomats and businessmen. He would often ask about the mysteries of wine, but in India it was rare for people to have knowledge on the subject, and it was more common to toast with juice, grape juice at the most. The taste of these drinks was generally strange, although sometimes they were distantly reminiscent of Rioja wines. Where did those tastes comes from that brought the memory of his own produce to his palate?, Ramón asked his hosts. But nobody offered him a specific answer.

Though maybe… that strange and confounding suspicion:

—They say that in Calcutta…

And so Ramón made his way to Calcutta.

Between Bombay and his chosen destination, Ramón had to cross a great distance in awful conditions - on the back of an elephant, on a narrow box just big enough for himself and his briefcase. It was very hot and Ramón suffered profusely. Luckily, the driver lent him a salakot and Ramón could ditch his uncomfortable top-hat. He also put his jacket aside and rolled up his shirt sleeves. This long trip between the two cities —in his dream- lasted but a few seconds. They crossed rice fields, jungles, unruly mountain ranges, fast moving rivers, small villages and abandoned temples inhabited by families of noisy monkeys. Was Mowgli’s ghost wandering around there? At one point on the journey, Ramón made out, from a safe distance, the beautiful striped figure of a Bengal tiger, which thrilled him and made his heart beat like a drum.

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A strange vision popped up in Ramón’s dream too. While travelling on the elephant’s back, Ramón was followed by a strange device up in the sky, a kind of enormous air balloon decorated with bunches of grapes from which, instead of a passenger basket, hung the hull of an old Spanish caravel, like those which had sailed out centuries before to conquer America.

When they got to Calcutta, Ramón immediately jumped onto a rickshaw pulled by a man on a tall, squeacky bicycle. They went through very narrow streets crammed with carts and people, and

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crossed crowded marketplaces. Often a cow would block their way, and both vehicles and people seemed to respect its presence as if that of a divinity or important personage. Was Kim’s ghost wandering around the alleyways of that crowded city? But what predominated in the atmosphere of that extensive neighbourhood, over all other sensations, were the smells.

Aromas of spices, of different kinds of incenses and perfumes… and also, every now and then, the smell of stagnant water, detritus and putrefaction. It was the outpouring of life, in its most pleasant and foulest manifestations. India was like a coin which showed on either side, the Janus face of human existence.

The driver left Ramón at the door of a temple half hidden among some very poor houses. At the door, several beggars and cripples were hoping for alms. Ramón gave them some coins, went up the small stairway and entered the building.

It was a wide room of a kind of chapel in which the faint light of dozens of small oil lamps shined here and there. At the far end, in a high niche, smiled the sculpted face of a goddess flanked by two cobras rising as if to attack. And sitting under the effigy, a holy man sat legs folded on several tiger skins. He gestured for Ramón to approach.

He was an old man, quite like Gandhi, with a naked torso and a sunken chest that showed his ribs, clavicles and sternum. He wore a large white turban which covered most of his forehead and his ears, and he had a sparse grey beard. His belly and upper legs were covered by baggy white shorts. The room smelled of spices that Ramón could not identify.

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Ramón moved forward, advancing up to the old Indian man, before sitting down in a similar posture in front of him.

Ramón did not have to wait long, the old man spoke almost immediately.

—I know everything about you —he said—. I know you have come from far away and I know what you are looking for. You have talked to explorers and scientists, you have asked them about the secret of the aroma of wine, and received no answers. And yet I, a modest religious man in humble India, have that secret in my power, handed down through many generations of ancestors. Maybe, though I am not sure, it is even a mystery as old as the world itself.

—So what they said about you is true.

—All those who you met know of my existence, but are forbidden to reveal it. They can only hint at it.

—Calcutta…

—Yes, now you are here, and I have the secret you are longing for so much. What are you willing to give me in return?

—Whatever you want, holy man… —Ramón managed to reply—. As long as it’s in my power. I am not a rich man. And my main intent isn’t to make a fortune, but instead to lead a life of plenitude, in which I can fulfil my deepest hopes.

—All that you have said pleases me greatly. And I tell you that it’s not money I ask for, Spanish gentleman. I only want a promise from you.

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—Tell me what. You already have it.

—Promise me you will never corrupt your wine. That you will always use grapes of the highest quality. That, even when you have a poor harvest, you will maintain the essence you strive to achieve. That you will not deceive trying to gain in quantity what you will lose in quality. And that you will pass on to your son, Enrique, and generations to come after, these secrets of wine that I am about to give you.

—I promise.

—What I have to say about your wine —he added— also holds true for your life: Never betray yourself.

The old man put his hand into the pocket of his shorts and took out a small glass flask, red in colour, with gleams of opal. He held it out to Ramón.

—In that flask, subtly mixed, are the most refined essences of the Orient. Every time you harvest your vineyards, add just a drop of this nectar to the big barrels where you keep the wine, and the aroma will penetrate its deepest essence. Always bear in mind this: should you not fulfil the promise you have made to me, the miraculous qualities of this sacred elixir will disappear for ever.

The dream vanished abruptly. And Ramón became aware where he really was: on his beloved armchair in Haro.

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n the years that followed, Ramón’s wines gained in prestige. He bought new land and planted more vines, he produced Crianzas and Reservas, widened his clientele

and, in short, made his fortune. He longed for his dreams to return, especially the one which had taken him to India, but was unable to summon them back: because dreams choose the dreamer, not the dreamer the dream. Naturally, there was no flask of essences, for that encounter with the holy man and his trip around the world were the fruit of fantasy, an oneiric illusion.

But Ramón thought of it as a kind of game, or almost a joke, that benefited his already renowned wines to some degree.

With the help of some friends, Ramón spread the word that he possessed something unique, a gift from the gods that, when mixed with wine, strengthened its fragrances without spoiling it, endowing it with a subtle appeal strong enough to lead to an irresistible addiction in those who tasted it. It was not a chemical product but a natural one, born from a mixture originating in the Far East. When someone asked him about it, Ramón would be enigmatic, neither denying nor affirming the story, and the rumour soon spread.

Sometimes, Ramón himself doubted if it wasn’t actually true that chance had endowed his grapes with a hidden power that was unknown even to himself.

His dreams about journeys to India, the elixir and the holy man never returned. But he kept the promise he had given as if he had sworn it in real life and in his own blood.

He never did betrayed it.

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nd so time passed without any great altercations. The prestige of Rioja wines spread through Spain and the rest of the world. And among these, Ramón Bilbao’s

own brand flourished.

But our man’s brain never stopped bubbling with ideas. He bought tractors to substitute the horses and carts, to transport the grapes quicker to the cellar at harvest time. For Ramón was aware, like many other farmers and entrepreneurs, that the time between picking the grape and the start of the process which converted it into wine was vital for its final quality.

Ramón also knew that the grape bunches had to be cut very carefully and that they should get to the cellar without being squashed. A grape in a good state at the start of the winemaking process, offered a much better chance of high quality wine later in the process.

However, what was just another fact about the treatment of the fruit for other vintners, was an obsession for Ramón. He had already decided that, when his new fleet of motorized vehicles was ready, these would carry long shallow boxes, to prevent the grapes from getting squashed and to make sure they arrived safely to the tanks in the cellar.

However, he still wasn’t sure about the issues surrounding transport and time.

No dream came to suggest the way ahead on these questions. On the other hand, now and then some dream would come to remind him of his concerns. One afternoon, as he took a nap on his armchair, his fantasies brought with them a weird image: he was flying on the back of a contraption of some kind which was nothing other than the big face of a clock. Beneath him, the

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regular lines of a vineyard ran out in all directions. And in front of him, in the distance, he could see the outline of the buildings of his own cellar. There was no doubt it was a dream reflecting his most recent and profound anxieties.

After that Ramón started devising transportation systems which he would turn into drawings during his free time. He did

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not expect to achieve much in this way, he was no inventor, but at least it kept him locked in his constant struggle to perfect his wines, his main goal in life.

For example, he drew a sort of a conveyor belt carrying long, shallow rectangular boxes. It was like the tracks of a narrow-gauge railway that ran between the rows of vines, driven by a small locomotive. But the fields were often uneven, with gentle hills rising and falling, small hollows, and twists and turns in all directions, so the imaginary network ended up becoming a labyrinth where there was no way of orienting oneself and which, in the end, became a trap from which it was impossible to escape.

Ramón also devised a gigantic aerostat, first with one balloon, then two, and finally three. It was placed in the vineyard, the grape bunches would be collected in its baskets, and then driven by a sudden gust of wind to leave them in the tanks of the cellar.

Later on Ramón transformed the aerostats into flying clocks, an allegory of his obsession with time.

Later Ramón created a zeppelin carrying a colossal basket, capable of collecting enough grapes to produce the wine of the best part of the annual harvest.

Ramón also designed a very long motorcar, shaped like a tube, with a single seat in the front. It had many jibs which came out from the side, like a centipede’s legs, these bore baskets which steadily collected the bunches of grapes cut by the agricultural workers.

He liked patenting all of his inventions. And although he was aware that most were of no use whatsoever, it was his way of staying active in his determination to ceaselessly improve

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his produce and of endowing his business with the biggest technological advances.

Gradually over time, Ramón also started hanging his drawings on his office walls, almost like a bizarre kind of interior decoration. One day, whilst visiting Bilbao, he bought a large globe with a plinth carved in fine wood. He placed it next to his armchair and would spin it around with his fingers.

The failures, the defeats, the effort, the adventure, the entrepreneurial spirit and his faith in intelligence, had made Ramón strong and had urged him on to achieving success.

And imagination too, of course.

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n that same November day where our story began, Ramón Bilbao got up from the armchair and went to the spacious warehouse of his cellar. The horses

and carts had already been loaded with their precious load.

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Ramón, like a general who sends his troops into battle – better still, like an explorer leading his caravan towards distant lands - gave the order to depart. One of the animals seemed to rear up, but the drivers were skilled and held it firm.

And so the row of carts started moving, leaving the cellar warehouse and taking different directions along the roads of La Rioja.

Ramón watched them leave with a strange feeling. Suddenly, he felt a kind of nostalgia for distant, unknown lands deep inside himself. He wished he could join a row of camels crossing the desert. Or set sail on a ship which, leaving the port of Ostia, would cross the Suez Canal, on its way to the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and India. Or traverse the odorous and narrow streets of Calcutta in search of hidden treasures.

Why not become a real traveller one day, not just in the dreams that assailed him in his armchair in Haro? Why not travel right around the globe, like his much admired Phileas Fogg?

He felt the desire to go out for a ride. He put on his driving overalls and his cap, adjusted his driving goggles, and went down to the garage. He started the truck and disappeared from the outskirts of Haro, on his way to his furthest-flung vineyards. A quarter of an hour later, he reached the small road which, surrounded by fields of vines, led across a small hill from where one could look out over the town of Abalos and the meanders of the river Ebro.

The fields were turning yellow, the branches of the trees were languishing, autumn was shrinking back, vanquished by winter and the first snow falls which already lay on the distant mountain

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peaks of the sierra. Here and there, the dark rows of vines dotted the scene, tracing out the geography of his vineyards.

And the words he had once read in a book whose title he had now forgotten suddenly and without meaning, came back to Ramón Bilbao:

“The only obligation a man has on this earth is to make his dreams come true”.

Historical Documentation

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Haro Muncipal Archive. 1914 Archive. Ramón Bilbao Murga, originally from Echavarri (Vizcaya), his wife Andresa Ellauri Elorza from Alonsótegui, the son of her and her first husband (Ramón's uncle) José Murga Ellauri and the three children of the couple Bilbao Ellauri were recorded as living in Haro. They are living at 69-71, Calle Marqués de Francos. Also living with them is the family of Benita Murga Ellauri with her husband Antonio Charlen de la Quintana and their son Antonio Charlen Murga.

1

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HMA. Industrial registry 1923-24. First mention of the business activity of Ramón Bilbao, as "cereal wholesaler".

2

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HMA. Industrial registry.3

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HMA. Different industrial registries from the years 1924 to 1929 where Ramón Bilbao is listed as "fruit commission agent" and "grain warehouse". The warehouse is next to his house in Calle Marqués de Francos.

4

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HMA. Industrial registry 1929. The first time that Ramón Bilbao appears as a “wine speculator” is the year of his death (he died on March 18, 1929 at 54 years of age). He had run the winery in the Calle de las Cuevas since 1924.

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About the writer····························

Javier Reverte is an unwearying journalist, writer and traveller. He has crossed the Arctic from East to West through the mythical Northwest Passage, sailed the Panama Canal and set foot on Cape Horn Island. He has descended the Amazon River from its source to its mouth, followed the course of the Upper Nile and has sailed the Congo River following the route taken by Joseph Conrad. He has sailed the waters of the Lake Tanganyika and rowed the River Yukon. He continues to travel and to be constantly amazed. His travel books include Trilogía de África, Corazón de Ulises, el Rio de la Desolación and En Mares Salvajes. He has written novels such as Trilogía de Centroamérica, La noche Detenida and El Médico de Ifni. He has also authored poetry books: Trazas de Polizón and Poemas africanos.

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