www.lagarisilla.es. Tel: 947 510683. C/ Isilla 18. Aranda de Duero (SPAIN)

This historical restaurant and cellar is located in the centre of Aranda de Duero, in the popular pedestrian Isilla Street. The menu is varied, with an interesting section of dishes from typical Spanish cuisine, and the Aranda speciality, roasted young lamb. Unlike many places in Aranda, dedicated only to lamb, there are also other kinds of meat and a wide variety of fish. And they have an interesting selection of desserts mixing traditional with more adventurous ones, like cream and cheese stuffed peppers in custard sauce. We really like the Castilian menu with Castilian soup, black sausage (morcilla), paprika sausage (chorizo), piquillo peppers with tuna salad and roasted lamb with green salad. Followed by the most typical desert of this region, fillo dough stuffed with custard cream or milhojas, literally a thousand sheets. Ribera wine of the house is also included. All for 30 euros it is a real bargain.

Their wine list really stands out. Over 400 different varieties are stored in their underground cellars, most of them from the “Ribera del Duero”, although they do stock some from different locations.

On the ground floor a large mud oven (used for roasts) sits next to an open grill, which visitors can see in action. The place is decorated in a traditional Castilian style: winepress beams, threshers, farming implements, etc…Of all the Spanish customs maintained in their restaurant, the Castilian ‘mud oven’ is essential to local Spanish cuisine. To make the typical delicacy, roast suckling lamb, the oven is heated with dry wood and kept at roughly 200ºC. An entire lamb is cut into four separate pieces and roasted in the oven for around 2 hours before it is fully ready to eat.

This restaurant has an underground cellar or bodega that was previously used for wine making and now it is only use for wine aging and storage of the restaurant wine. They make their wine in their facility outside Aranda. This cellar can be visited if you have your meal in the restaurant.

The bodega consists of a series of underground galleries 12m. deep situated in the historic area of Aranda de Duero. They were excavated in the 13th-14th century. Although they were mentioned for the first time in the 15th century during Sancho de Navarra’s reign, it is stated that wine was sold and developed in these wine cellars and bodegas. Though the main purpose has been to preserve the wine, on several occasions they have been used as a refuge or as an escape route to the other side of the city wall. Even though there are not many documents, it has been proven that wine was craftily developed there till 1900. In 1903 the bodega began its current commercial phase.

In 1929 the bodega was radically transformed, and new technologies were introduced. It became one of the first bodegas to use glass bottles and mechanical systems for de-stemming and pressing the grapes. The wine was taken to the selling point situated in front of the bodega by porters carrying it in goat wineskins. The porters were known as “subidores de vino” or wine lifters.

This traditional method of wine development, used until 1965-1970, became obsolete as cooperative societies appeared. In 1995 an ambitious project to reform the bodega was attempted. It consisted of developing wine in traditional methods as well as utilizing current technology, so as to produce high quality wines, and limit production guaranteed by the D. O. Ribera del Duero. This was the beginning of the winery “El Lagar de Isilla”

Nowadays between 150.000 and 160.000 kilos of Temparanillo or Tinta del País are used. Half of them come from young vines and the other half from 50 to 70 year-old vines. They produce red wines: Joven Roble with 5 months in oak casks, Crianza with 12 to 14 months in oak cask and the rest to reach two years in bottle. Reserva with 16 to 20 months in oak cask and the rest up to 3 years in a bottle, and Special Selection Viñas Viejas undergoing malolactic fermentation in new oak casks and aging for 16 months in oak followed by some time in bottle.