Casa del Vino

On Saturday a group of us from the IAC decided to go to Casa del Vino, which is literally house of wine. They sell all Tenerife wines and generally better ones at cheaper prices than in the supermarkets. The bus trip was as usual fun, as google maps is failing epically on Tenerife at the moment. But thankfully the bus driver helped. (And the others speak a lot better Spanish than me, which isn't hard, so that helped.)
First step, wine tasting!

let the tasting begin!

Here you have to buy the "glass", so we got 2 each glasses (more like 1/4 glasses) of 4 whites and 2 reds, between the 4 of use. The first and last 2 were amazing, the middle 2 ok. But we all loved the last red, 1861 which was amazing. Of course, probably one of the most expensive but so good. I think we all brought a bottle (or 2 in my case - they are going home! Maybe.)

Best red (photo stolen/borrowed from Heidi)

tasting room

We ended up spending about 2.5 hrs there, partly because the tasting lady kept wondering off and leaving us. But we had wine and cheese and a cute cat to keep us occupied.

chilled out (or drunk) cat

After the tasting, before our dinner reservation, we wandered around the museums. The wine museum was interesting and happily translated into English. I wish I had thought to get some photos of the buildings before it got dark. But we were all too eager to get to the tasting room. :) The best I can do is an shot of the model of the place. It really was a very pretty place. And the view was amazing down the coast and of the ocean. (Of course I forgot to get a photo of that too until it was too dark.)

what the place looks like

Poetic

I was quite surprised how many wineries and vineyards there are on Tenerife. Traveling around, I have mainly seen banana plantations. And the wines real are very good and reasonably priced. Unfortunately they don't export them our of the Canaries. :(

ranges of Tenerife wines

There was also a Bee museum. Most of this was very random and all in Spanish so honestly I had no clue. But the big honey comb complete with bees was both cool and creepy.

Bees!

Slightly creepy baby bees

And they had left a bee keeper outfit out. So I had to try it on. Of course! (I am a big 5 yr old and love the museums for kids as they are the most fun by far!) I was the only one as everyone else was being very sensible.

Playing bee keeper

breaking the bee hive. Oops!

 We walked around randomly and found a tunnel to no where.

Following down a random tunnel

 And also an agricultural museum. Which was vaguely interesting.

Something to do with removing wheat.

In the end we got to the restaurant (part of Casa del Vino) quite early but thankfully they weren't very busy and let us in early. The food was ok. I think I picked the wrong thing. It's usually a good assumption it is a bad choice when it comes with chips. :( But the wine was good, the starters very nice and the company lovely. We did miss out on dessert however as they seemed to forget about us. You can never say you get hassled or rushed in a Spanish restaurant. We were there about 3.5 hrs!

I would recommend Casa del Vino to anyone visiting the north part of Tenerife. Definitely worth a visit for a chilled out and relaxing afternoon.
We got a taxi back to the tram. There was a festival on in town, which I thought about going too, but I was carrying my wine and it was packed. So I decided to just go home to bed instead.