Rioja & the Basque Country
Five days through the bodegas of Haro, the medieval villages of Rioja Alavesa, the txakoli slopes above the Bay of Biscay, and the pintxos bars of San Sebastián.
Rioja is Spain's most storied wine region — a place where Tempranillo has been aged in American oak for over a century and where the great bodegas of Haro's Barrio de la Estación stand as monuments to a particular idea of what wine should be: structured, patient, built for the table. But Rioja is also a region in productive argument with itself, and the modern producers of Rioja Alavesa are making wines that look nothing like their grandparents' Reservas.
The Basque Country lies an hour north, and the contrast is total. Here the wine is txakoli — bracingly acidic, barely alcoholic, poured from a height to raise a head of foam — and the food is among the best on earth. San Sebastián has more Michelin stars per capita than any city in the world, but its greatest pleasure costs almost nothing: a counter, a glass of txakoli, and a row of pintxos on bread.
Haro — The Barrio de la Estación
Arrival in Haro
Fly into Bilbao and drive south through the Sierra Cantabria into the Ebro valley. Haro announces itself with vineyards: the town sits at the western end of Rioja Alta, where the Atlantic influence keeps temperatures moderate and the soils — clay-limestone on the higher slopes, alluvial gravel on the valley floor — produce wines of elegance rather than weight. Check into the Hotel Los Agustinos, a converted 14th-century convent in the old town, and walk to the Barrio de la Estación before dinner.
López de Heredia
The Barrio de la Estación is a cluster of historic bodegas built around Haro's railway station in the 1870s and 1880s, when the phylloxera crisis in France sent négociants south looking for wine. López de Heredia is the most extraordinary of them — a winery that has not changed its methods since its founding in 1877. The visit descends through cobwebbed cellars where wines age for decades in American oak, past a tasting room designed by a student of Gaudí, to a finale of Viña Tondonia Reserva and Gran Reserva that redefines what aged Tempranillo can be.
Dinner: Beethoven
Haro's best restaurant is Beethoven on Calle Santo Tomás — a classic Riojan dining room where the chuletillas al sarmiento (lamb cutlets grilled over vine cuttings) and the house Reserva are the only order of business. Book ahead.
Bodegas Muga, Roda & the Alta Producers
Morning: Bodegas Muga
Muga is the most welcoming bodega in the Barrio de la Estación — a family estate that still employs its own cooper to build and repair the American and French oak barrels in which every wine ages. The morning visit takes in the cooperage, the fermentation hall (with its open wooden vats for the top wines), and the barrel cellar before a tasting of the Prado Enea Gran Reserva, one of Rioja's most reliable benchmarks for traditional style.
Late Morning: CVNE & Roda
CVNE (Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España) has been making wine in Haro since 1879 and its Imperial Reserva remains one of the great value propositions in Spanish wine. Bodegas Roda, by contrast, represents the modern face of Rioja Alta — a gravity-fed winery built into the hillside above the Barrio, making concentrated, oak-forward wines from old-vine Tempranillo. The contrast between the two visits is instructive.
Afternoon: San Vicente de la Sonsierra
Drive east along the Ebro to San Vicente de la Sonsierra, the cliff-top village that is home to Benjamín Romeo's Bodega Contador — producer of Contador and La Cueva del Contador, two of Spain's most sought-after wines. The village itself, with its castle ruins and views across the valley to the Sierra Cantabria, is one of Rioja's most dramatic settings. Return to Haro for a final evening in the old town.
Rioja Alavesa — Laguardia & the Grower-Producers
Move to Laguardia
Cross the Ebro into the Basque province of Álava and the sub-zone of Rioja Alavesa. The landscape changes immediately: the vineyards climb higher, the soils become more purely clay-limestone, and the villages — Laguardia, Elciego, Samaniego — sit on ridges with views south across the entire Rioja plain. Laguardia is the region's showpiece: a perfectly preserved medieval walled town whose streets run above a labyrinth of underground bodegas carved from the rock.
Remírez de Ganuza, Samaniego
Fernando Remírez de Ganuza is one of Rioja Alavesa's most meticulous producers — a grower who farms his own vineyards in Samaniego with obsessive attention to detail, selecting only the top and bottom clusters from each bunch (the shoulders, with their smaller, more concentrated berries) for his top wines. The tasting at the family bodega covers the full range, from the entry-level Erre Punto to the extraordinary Trasnocho, made from a single plot of 80-year-old vines.
Afternoon: Marqués de Riscal, Elciego
No visit to Rioja Alavesa is complete without a look at the Frank Gehry-designed hotel and winery at Marqués de Riscal in Elciego — a titanium-clad landmark that has become as much a symbol of modern Rioja as López de Heredia is of the traditional. The winery tour and tasting are secondary to the architecture, but the Baron de Chirel Reserva, made from old Cabernet Sauvignon vines planted in the 1970s, is one of the region's most distinctive wines. Stay the night in Laguardia.
Txakoli Country & San Sebastián
Morning: Txakoli at Ameztoi, Getaria
Drive north through the Sierra Cantabria and down to the Basque coast. Getaria is a fishing village on the Bay of Biscay and the heartland of Getariako Txakolina — the most celebrated of the three txakoli appellations. Ameztoi farms steep, terraced vineyards of Hondarrabi Zuri directly above the sea, producing a txakoli of unusual depth and a rosé (Rubentis) that has become one of Spain's most fashionable wines. The tasting at the bodega, with the Atlantic below and the vineyards above, is one of the great wine experiences in northern Spain.
Afternoon: Arrive San Sebastián
Drive east along the coast to San Sebastián — 30 minutes from Getaria. Check into the Hotel de Londres y de Inglaterra on the Concha promenade and spend the afternoon walking: the old town (Parte Vieja), the fishing port, the beach. San Sebastián is one of the most beautiful small cities in Europe, and it rewards slow exploration on foot.
Evening: The Pintxos Circuit
The Parte Vieja's pintxos bars are the point of the whole trip. The ritual is simple: move from bar to bar, order a glass of txakoli or a Rioja Crianza at each, and eat whatever looks best on the counter. Bar Nestor (tortilla, reserved in advance), La Cuchara de San Telmo (hot pintxos, queue early), Ganbara (mushrooms, spider crab), and Bar Zeruko (creative, modern) are the essential stops. Budget three hours and comfortable shoes.
San Sebastián Markets & Bilbao
Morning: La Bretxa Market & Farewell Pintxos
San Sebastián's La Bretxa market opens early and is the best place in the city to understand the Basque obsession with produce: the fish counter alone — turbot, hake, kokotxas, spider crab — is worth the visit. A final round of morning pintxos at Bar Txepetxa (anchovy specialists) and a coffee at one of the old town's cafés before the drive west.
Afternoon: Bilbao — Guggenheim & Casco Viejo
Drive an hour west to Bilbao. The Guggenheim needs no introduction, but allow time to walk around the building as well as through it — Frank Gehry's titanium curves read differently from every angle, and the Puppy topiary and Louise Bourgeois spider outside are as memorable as anything inside. Then cross the river to the Casco Viejo, Bilbao's old quarter, for a final round of pintxos in the seven streets (Siete Calles) before departing from Bilbao airport.
Final Glass: Café Iruña
Bilbao's Café Iruña, open since 1903, is the city's grandest café — a Moorish-tiled room on the Jardines de Albia where the txakoli is cold, the pintxos are generous, and the afternoon light through the tall windows is exactly right for a last glass before the flight home.
Trip Highlights
- López de Heredia — the most extraordinary winery visit in Spain, unchanged since 1877
- Bodegas Muga — Haro's most welcoming cellar, with barrels made on site by the house cooper
- Laguardia — the walled medieval village at the heart of Rioja Alavesa
- Txakoli tasting above the Bay of Biscay at Ameztoi or Txomin Etxaniz
- The pintxos bars of San Sebastián's Parte Vieja — Bar Nestor, La Cuchara de San Telmo, Ganbara
- Guggenheim Bilbao and the Casco Viejo's seven streets