Interest in wine tourism, or including visits to wineries in a holiday, is growing steadily but surely. The reason is probably that we are taking slowing down on holiday more seriously. We want to explore the destination we are visiting in greater depth.
Food and wine are a significant part of that destination. At a recent dinner with representatives from one of my favourite areas of Spain, the Kingdom of Navarra, a journalist remarked that the Garnacha grape was a part of their DNA, it represented their soul. The region of La Rioja has so much less to offer without Rioja wine, so too Bordeaux or Champagne, the Chiantis of Tuscany and so on.
And from the point of view of the wineries, tourism provides a valuable extra source of revenue and breathes life back into more rural areas, spreading the benefits of tourism beyond the traditional tourist hot spots
FINE – A wine tourism event like no other
It was with this in mind that I decided to attend the March edition of the FINE wine marketplace for wine tourism suppliers and buyers to meet. It is an annual event held in Valladolid with a second event, Italian themed, held later in the year.
The event is held over two days and introduces me to wineries and wine experiences from Spain, Portugal and a few from Sicily. We have 15 minute meetings, in which the suppliers detail what they can offer and I discuss what I think my clients might want.
It’s not just about collecting a pile of business cards. I am developing relationships with wine tourism suppliers which helps me to plan out itineraries for clients. I can’t visit every supplier in person and I have to take into account the differing interests that each client will have. Meeting in person gives me a good sense of what each supplier can offer, or not offer.
Many of the suppliers brought their own wines for us to try. I had some quite extended tastings with wines from the Emporda region of Spain and from around the Douro Valley in Portugal as well as Riojas and a good Sicilian wine
The increasing interest in wine tourism in Ribera del Duero
After the event, I am taken on a short two day tour of some of the wineries in the Ribera del Duero region of Spain so that I can experience what I will offer clients. These trips organised for the travel trade are planned to allow us to see as much as possible in as short a time as possible. I certainly would not recommend this two day tour to clients as I believe that wine should be savoured, along with the destination, at leisure and not in haste.
I usually recommend just one winery a day or a maximum of two. It’s not just about limiting the consumption of alcohol, it is about having the time to enjoy the trip. The second factor I like to impart is a variety of experience. A wine tour which consists of walk among the vines, see the wine production areas, cellaring and bottling, taste three wines and good bye, and then repeat can quickly lead to boredom.
Interested in seeing more of the Ribera del Duero?
The Ribera del Duero is rapidly becoming recognised as one of Spain’s best regions for wine tourism.
I regularly organise trips to the region to explore its food, wine, castles and people. I can organise a trip for you, or if you would prefer to join one of my group trips, all you have to do is drop me a line or call me to let me know of your interest. All group trips take into account the interests and preferences of every member of the group.
In an area such as the Ribera del Duero, which now has over 300 wineries, it would be impossible to see everything or even more than a handful. One approach might be to plan a visit to a “top 5” but that first of all can be very subjective and secondly is no guarantee of variety.
I therefore look for points of difference between each winery and each experience. There may still be points of similarity: if two wineries both feature modern architecture, it can be interesting to compare the two.
This particular tour starts off, perhaps appropriately, with the Protos Winery. Protos is the ancient Greek word for First and the Protos Winery was the first winery in the Ribera del Duero to be properly organised as a winery, producing quality wines. It was the brainchild of 11 producers and their story is celebrated in a talk when you first arrive at the winery.
The Protos Winery
The Protos Winery is a short drive from Valladolid and we park in between a castle on a hill and a modern looking winery. The first surprise is that we enter the winery through the hill. Its cellars are underneath the castle. There is a wine museum in the castle but we didn’t have time to visit it.
The visit starts with a glass of rosé and a audio visual presentation of the winery and its history. We tour through the corridors of barrels and bottles which ultimately leads to the new winery with its shiny vats.
It’s then time to taste some wines. Protos uses Tempranillo grapes for its reds, a Verdejo for their whites and a mix of Garnacha and Merlot for their rosé. We have some local cheese to accompany the wines. After the tasting I take a Reserva from 2020 from the shop.
The modern winery was designed by British architect Richard Roegrs in collaboration with Alonso Balaguer y Arquitectos and essentially consists of 5 parabolic terracotta-tiled vaults, using traditional materials with the most modern, energy efficient wine making facilities
Portia Winery
Our second visit is to the Portia Winery, part of the Martinez Zabala family which includes Faustino, the most well known Rioja in the UK.
The Portia winery is the only winery in the region entirely designed from scratch by Norman Foster, and worth a visit just for its architecture alone. It is one of the most visited wineries in the region.
The significance of the winery being designed as a winery is the logical way in which it is designed. It is a three legged shape, with one leg for the wine making process, one for storing in barrels and one for storing in bottles, with the centre being the Reception area, meeting rooms, restaurant and shop.
The winery is on a hill with lorries carrying the grapes to the top, and dropping their loads into vats, allowing gravity to press the grapes. The storage areas are underground which helps to minimise the impact upon the area and to keep energy costs down.
It is difficult to judge the size of the winery from the outside. Inside it seems very spacious. We tasted several of their wines and then had an impressive lunch… a lot of it and absolutely delicious with some excellent wines to accompany it.
Condado de Hazo
The afternoon took us to our third winery visit. If I am organising a wine tour, I don’t recommend three wineries in a day, but on these agent trips we only have a limited amount of time to see as much as possible.
This winery gave us the opportunity to have a stroll outside to what they call the viewing area, giving us a good idea of the area surrounding the Bodegas. The vines at this time of year are black T’s standing out among the paler limestone soil with pink blossom of almond trees dotted about. The viewing area is particularly important for experiencing a solar eclipse for later in the year. There are no lights in the vineyards so there will be very little light pollution.
The walk also helped to walk off that big lunch, getting us ready for a quick tour of the underground cellars and then a tasting of four of their wines.
Arzuaga
Our final stop of the day was the Arzuaga hotel and winery. The hotel is a roomed with a spa, two restaurants, one of which is a Michelin starred. It is impressive. The room are big, comfortable and very quiet. Dinner is again big, but we were all still feeling full from lunch, so perhaps did not appreciate it as much as we could have done.
After a good breakfast spread we were off to see something else that Arzuaga offers, their collection of wild boar and deer. The boar are used to supply local restaurants and the deer are occasionally hunted by friends of the family, but we are here to taste wine rather than admire wild boar, so we head back to the hotel and the winery next door.
After touring the steel vats and oak barrels and bottling plant, there was a brief audio visual presentation screened upon some of their concrete vats. Our tasting tried four of their wines, rosé, white, and two reds.
Abadia Retuerta
The second winery on day 2 was a medieval convent which is now both hotel and winery, and a good example of how you can create a varied itinerary focusing purely on wine. I would however, always recommend adding in additional points of interest, be it in a related gastronomical area or architecture, wellness, or something else.
The hotel retains that sense of space and quiet that you would expect from a convent, a library doubling up as a refectory, a chapel which could also be an event space, and beautiful spacious rooms. Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffiths chose the Abadie Retuerta as the venue for their wedding and it is easy to see why. It would be a great place to hold a retreat.
The winery, which is not in the same grounds as the hotel is strikingly modern in contrast to the medieval hotel, with shiny steel pipes and vats, and oak barrels racked and stretching into the distance.
It was a French winemaker, Pascal Debeck, who led the revival of wine making here so it may not be a surprise that Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and Petit Verdot grapes are grown on this estate. The dominant grape, however, at about 70% is the tempranillo.
The wines are labelled as VT Castilla y León rather than DO Ribera del Duero and this gives their wine makers a little more creative freedom. The Seleccion Especial is their flagship wine and is at times considered to be even better than the reds from Ribera del Duero.
We taste two reds and two whites, all very impressive. The wines here are expensive, well over 30€ a bottle and sometimes much more, so reluctantly I did not buy any from here.
For visitors travelling from the UK by air, there is of course a limit to the amount of wine you can bring back in a suitcase, so at times we have a difficult choice to make as to which wines to buy and which to reluctantly leave on their shelves.
It is then time to board our coach for our final wine destination of this whistlestop tour of the Ribera del Duero.
Valdubon
The Condado de hazo and Valdubon share one characteristic which makes comparing them interesting: they are both much smaller and more intimate than the others on our tour.
Valdubon is the smallest of the wineries that we visited. It felt more informal, more like visiting a friend’s home than a winery… although sadly none of my current friends have wine making facilities round the back.
And although the winery itself may be a little smaller, the vineyard is owned by a very well established family, the Ferrer Family who have 7 wineries, one of which is in Argentina. The family have been making wine since 1616 at La Freixeneda, so they know a thing or two about making excellent wine.
The current president, Pedro Ferrer has a singular purpose : to create wine that reflects the grape variety, terroir and climate. The wine should be a reflection of its environment, and that perhaps is the essence of wine tasting. We are not just drinking wine, we are feeling the destination.
The visit started with a chat in their reception area, log fire blazing to keep off that end of winter chill… this is more like a home than a formal wine tasting centre… with a glass of rosé. We visit the wine making areas, trying a tempranillo from one of the steel vats before returning to the house for a proper tasting.
We start with a Vionta, a fresh, easy drinking white wine which comes from one of their other vineyards on the Atlantic Coast of Spain, close to the border with Portugal. We move onto an Orube, a red from Garnacha grapes made in the Rioja Alavesa region. We have the 2023, the 2022 has won a gold medal in the Garnacha del Mundo 2022. Our final wine is from Valdubon, their multi award winning Crianza, and a very good wine it is.
Conclusion
The tour just dipped a toe into the wines of the Ribera del Duero region. There are some 300 wineries to explore in an area that is getting increasingly recognised for the quality of their DO wines, but also for the creativity of their winemakers. Creativity is of course a quality to be handled cautiously. Wine buyers and drinkers want to be reassured about the quality of the drink they are consuming: this is one of the main purposes of controlling the appellation so strictly.
But those strict controls can also be a hindrance, preventing wine makers from pushing the boundaries and exploring new flavours and concepts. Perhaps, as the number of wine drinkers continue to fall, particularly among younger generations, winemakers must seek to adapt to changing tastes as well as changing climates.
