Castlexperience | Wine tours — Local services in Barcelona

A well-organized tour catering to global travelers is not an easy thing to pull off, but Castle Experience Wine Tours succeeded as if it is. Their good natured and incessantly charming guides comprised a high-functioning team that made no errors and never dropped the ball as they played off each other and traded responsibilities in a way that ensured a refreshing parade of faces and styles for the tour goer to enjoy. Their experience in this business perhaps manifested itself best in their ongoing, humorous stream of witty comments and observations as they educated us about local culture and the history that cultivated it. Alfonso, our primary guide, would have seemed at home delivering a stand-up routine on the Late Night show. We departed at 9am and after watching the bizarre rock formations of Montserrat grow larger during our hour-long approach, we arrived at the mountain top retreat and disembarked amid a steady but navigable stream of other visitors. The balance of guide-led vs free time was helpful and my family and I had enough time to hike the path out to the cross to take in the stunning vista. Because of a traffic jam at the entry gates, we had to wait an extra twenty minutes for our bus (this due to the need for the tour company to deploy their limited fleet of tour buses across several ongoing tours). Once we boarded, it was a quick drive to the Oller Del Mas winery situated in picturesque vineyards overlooked by the distant peaks of Montserrat. We were led through the gates of this castle-like edifice and into a narrow, dark room with arched ceiling and long table that was set for us all. The one detail I was most concerned about—whether or not my vegan substitute meal would be palatable—turned out to be one of the many high points of the trip. The dish I was made overflowed with colorfully fresh vegetables and featured several prepared foods that I could not identify (I think one was a serving of stuffed eggplant and another a potato concoction). I was also pleased to note the absence of any oil used in the food’s preparation. Kudos to the chef! I believe Alfonso and his colleagues have a stake in the Winery and, although shameless in singing its products’ praises, are certainly justified in doing so, as each of the three wines we sampled during the tasting—a Blanco and two vino tintos—were exceptional. As a former educator and evaluator of educators, I can say that Alfonso did a quality job of teaching us the ins and outs of an effective wine tasting. After the meal, we had some free time to spend in the outdoor bar area of the winery. Another hour and we were back in Barcelona by 3:30 as promised. At no point during this enjoyable day did we feel rushed. I highly recommend it if you’re looking to fill out a day of your Barcelona trip and learn about the local culture beyond the...

-- I took the half-day tour w/cogwheel train, Anays was my guide --

This tour has the ease and relaxed flow of something that has been well organized. This is noticeable in the big things, like the schedule that has been well tuned to offer a good mix of guided and unguided parts, but also in small details, like how each group that came with the same bus uses a different route through the locations, how the guides are very relaxed and clearly know what they’re doing, and how the information email covers everything very well and even offers an American phone number.

Montserrat is the amazing, badly-hidden secret of Cataluña. As in: it’s clearly very famous within the region, but I’m not sure if I had heard of it from my Spanish family or if the name reminded me of the font family. Either way: beautiful, historically significant, and it was a nice surprise to stumble upon an ancient boy choir like this. The vineyard and castle were intriguing and beautiful as well, but the important part there was, of course, the wine.

My tour guide was Anays, a catalan with a capital C, a bubbly presenting style and a strong American accent. She was great. The tour clearly has a few fixed talking points, but those dots are connected by the guides themselves, and she connected the dots beautifully. She often gauged the interest of the group in different topics and would go deeper or not depending on how interested we were. But she also offered a lot of information that was particularly interesting to her, like her extensive knowledge on wines stemming from her winemaker studies, or the backstory of the vineyard dog, for those interested. There is this saying in the world of video games to indicate the level of detail and humanity in a game’s systems, brought down to the essential question of “Can you pet the dog?”. Well, you CAN pet the dog (if he wants to as well, of course), and your tour guide WILL set alarms on her phone to not get lost too much in her tangent on local wines and the balance between wine tasting show-off and science (I wouldn’t have minded more). She also sent us a great list of recommendations in Barcelona afterwards.

I repeat the recommendation given by the tour guides: go on a weekday. Montserrat had a good amount of tourists on the Wednesday I went, but I can imagine it wouldn’t be very pleasant in the weekend. The full-day tour would definitely be worth it: there is enough to do culturally in both Montserrat and the castle, and (judging by the way Anays greeted every other person we encountered),...

BEWARE !! If you are wanting to see Montserrat this is not for you. This is a tour operated by the owner of the winery. The tour is heavily focused on the winery. The tour guides are employed by the winery and get commission for the wines their groups buy. I have never had such a bad experience for any viator tours as I did with this one. Our Guide was Sofia. We leave bus stop at 10 and reach the Monastery at 11. She spent almost 1 hour 15 mins talking about stuff and wouldn't let us explore anything that she was actually talking about. We were standing outside the monastery for one hour just listening to her talking about "what we can do". She was obsessed with finishing the talk as if its task that she needs to finish. She would go so far as to ask me to not go to toilet until she finishes talking. Zero flexibility and attention to other people's needs. Not everyone is interested in the same things. Whilst inside the monastery she would pull back when they tried to go ahead and see the black Madonna so she could "finish her talk" again. At that point we had to force ourselves to separate and go see the mountains because it was literally just 40 mins left to see anything. She rushed us all along afterwards during the so called "free time". While these guys earn commission from the winery, she got mad at us for spending a few extra minutes at the local farmer market at the monastery where we stopped to buy things to support them. Totally F'ed the mood. All grown ups here not on a school field trip. Basically they wanted to rush the Montserrat part so we can get to the winery. I have never been this mad at any tour in all these years. She was a totally different person when we reached winery. Totally relaxed and not in any rush. They wanted people to spend more time so people can buy more of the below average tasting wine. They became super nice. Plus, being someone who has major in history, the tour guides are not at all knowledgeable and just say BS which American tourists will believe. At the end of the tour they said we will only open front door of bus for "security reasons". I dont understand what security reasons but to stand there expecting a tip. I have always been a generous tipper and seriously I had to just rush out to avoid eye contact with them. P.S. if you are a wine enthusiast and wine tour is what you are looking for then go for it but dont pick this tour...