Curious structures in and around Paula’s ‘place,’ Part One: The witch’s hut
Fernando Meruelo named Bodegas Lar de Paula after his daughter, Paula. “Lar,” he explained, is an Old Castilian word for “place.” His younger brother, José, is the winemaker. For many years, Fernando was the technical director at Bodegas Faustino; his present operation is minuscule by comparison and obviously a family affair.
Lar de Paula is in a sleepy little village called Elvillar de Álava. As we pulled into town, we asked two laborers for directions to the winery. They were from Vitoria and didn’t know. We didn’t panic. The town has only about fifteen or twenty buildings, and in less than two minutes we found our quarry.
Elvillar is most famous in these parts for a nearby dolmen called La Chabola de la Hechicera, or the witch’s hut. Dolmens are the excavated ruins of likely prehistoric tombs, table-like structures that were fashioned several thousand years ago using enormous slabs of stone.
I know all this because we shot video of the ancient megalith back in 2007 for our educational documentary co-production with the Culinary Institute of America.
As I recall, Elvillar’s witch’s hut enjoyed, maybe, something like a fifth of a second of screen time in our final DVD.
But that’s okay. Because, now, finally, I have an opportunity to give this simple but very powerful structure its due, and include, at last, a photograph I took of La Chabola over two years ago.