The La Rioja Region

About 2 hours south of San Sebastian sits the La Rioja region, an inland valley surrounded by 1,000 to 1,500 foot mountains.  This valley has the ideal climate for vineyards and is noted for its temperate climate and wineries that produce excellent wines that are sold worldwide, including California.  Before we left for Barcelona, we took a tour bus to visit two wineries – the more traditional Via Tondonia in the old town of Haro, and a more modern winery near the town of Leza.

Inside Via Tondonia our tour guide showed us the old style oak wood vats that they still use for wine making in a tradition that is hundreds of years old.  Then she took us for a fantastic tour of the underground wine cellar where they age the wine.  The cellar is without a doubt, the largest Linda and I have ever visited with one corridor stretching for almost 500 feet.  We could see the barrels of wines of all types lining the various tunnels waiting for their time to be “just right” according to the wine master who periodically test tasted them.  We then emerged out of the lower, hillside door of the cellar that opened onto a beautiful river along which the winery is located.    I bought one bottle of red wine from Via Tondonia for 20 Euros, or about $28 in American currency.

The next stop was at the more modern winery that used the latest in aluminum vats and computer controlled techniques.  With four workers, they produced about 10 times as much volume of wine as the traditional winery produced with about 60 workers using the age old wine making and cask making techniques.  This would probably be reflected in the price structure of the respective brands of wine.