Packed as always, but now inching towards the finish line, Day 3 marked the halfway point of our week abroad. The morning started with early breakfast as usual at the Hotel Don Ramiro. After which we did a company move to the neighboring town of Aguilar de la Frontera to shoot at the smallest local cooperage yet, Tonelería Luque. 
While two teams spoke to Francisco Luque Lopez himself, who outlined the history of his independent business and the evolution of cooperage over the course of his career, another two teams spread out to shoot b-roll of the area and get footage of one of Luque’s hardest working coopers in his element. As always the barrel-making process appeared to be a lucratively gorgeous craft of the soul.
Afterward we expanded our knowledge of the regionally famous Pedro Ximénez (PX) grape in our following interviews at Bodegas Toro Albalá. Here we spoke to oenologist Cristina Osuna Herrera who emphasized the value of the regional berry in both wines and vinegars produced at Toro Albalá. At the end of our time, the entire crew got to sample three of the wonderful PX vinegars distributed by the company, and boy did we get to buying after that!
After Albalá we made a detour to one of our previous shooting spots in search of our lost tripod Nemo. Brokenheartedly, our team has searched intently for the last 24 hours to ensure his safe return home. But sadly he has yet to be found. Dear reader, if you work at Tonelería Juan Pino, or Perez Barquero and stumble upon a frail, gray, and black tripod with a damaged leg, please contact PaceDocs with a picture. Our dear Nemo is missed and everyone here at Pace would love to see him come home!
So as a chunk of our crew searched for Nemo, the other half broke for our signature lunch and footage logging time at Hotel Don Ramiro. Here the tedious post-production process began and dragged on into the later hours of the evening. But the time saved in postproduction editing will be extraordinary as long as everyone is willing to sacrifice the time now as a collective. So for our future editors, the teams are always happy to take the hit!
As logging continued at Don Ramiro, Professor Luskay took a team to the local Restaurante Las Camachas for another interview and Professor Guarneri took a B-roll team into town for some more footage of the area. Our discussion at Las Camachas with author, Maria Dolores Ramirez, provided insight into the tradition of cooperage from a less crafter-oriented perspective. Maria’s interview was wonderful to sit with as she reflected on the ways tradition can evolve and reveal new dimensions of an ancient craft like cooperage which has only expanded to be more inclusive of cultural change over the years.
After all the cameras cut for the day, we met with the talented musician Primitivo José Buendía Picó, who had agreed to provide his compositions for our documentary. Speaking with him in person for the first time was a breath of fresh air. We discussed much of his personal background and heard all about his creative promises to the project. Read more about how we connected with him in this blog post we just put up. Double blog posts tonight (see, we told you the grind never stops!)
Tomorrow we say goodbye to the Hotel Don Ramiro and Montilla-Moriles as a whole. While we’ll be sure to miss the awesome community of coopers we’ve been privileged to meet here, we’re eagerly looking forward to staying in the beautiful city of Córdoba.
As always, be sure to follow our socials for more live updates from our production route through Spain.