We are waiting to cross the highway, leaving the entrance of Vega-Sicilia. Through the windshield, across the road, the vines that grow the estate’s most famous wine, Unico, rise up the hill facing us. Closer to the top, the forest begins, where the hill reaches toward the high plain that lies to the south, our ultimate destination for lunch, if the light would ever change.
Down the road to the right is Valladolid, a city on the Duero River where, in one of the many castles of Castilla, 550 years ago, Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabella I, the princess whose family controlled this northern center of Iberia. There would have been no intersection here at the time, no Vega-Sicilia until 400 years later. The road would have been a cañada real, wide enough for driving a vast flock of slow-moving sheep instead of this endless stream of speeding lorries.