EXTENDED CLASSICAL WINES TOUR. JUNE 4-8 2007
RIOJA, RIBERA del DUERO, AND BILBAO - 5 days/ 4 nights

SUMMARY: Special tour combining Wine, Architecture, Art and Gastronomy. The tour starts and finish in Madrid, and covers, Ribera del Duero, Burgos, Rioja and Bilbao. The tour will take you through the best wines in Spain in Rioja and Ribera del Duero and its history, from the cathedral of Burgos to the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

LODGING: Lodging will be in a 5 start winery hotel in Ribera del Duero, a four star hotel in Burgos and Rioja, in a small medieval town home of winemakers.

June 4. Monday. Ribera de Duero. Night in Ribera de Duero

  • Morning. Pick up from the hotel and introduction to the tour starting the drive to Ribera del Duero
  • Visit a winery of the Ribera del Duero region.
  • For lunch you will enjoy the typical meal from Ribera, roasted lamb in a wood fired oven with Ribera del Duero wines.
  • After lunch we can visit a second winery and the medieval town of Peñaranda or the town of Peñafiel, and its magnificent castle from the 11th century, home of a newly opened wine museum.
  • Hotel check in and dinner on your own.

June 5: Ribera and Burgos. Night in Burgos

  • Visit two wineries of the Ribera del Duero region.
  • Drive to Burgos
  • Tapas lunch in Burgos. Tapas are small dishes that you have in bars or casual restaurants instead of a formal meal
  • Free time in Burgos. We suggest you visit its cathedral, begun in the 13th century and completed in the 15th and 16th centuries. Our Lady of Burgos sums up Gothic architecture in all its beauty with a unique collection of reredos, tombs, choir, stalls, stained glass, etc. It has been also declared World Heritage monument by UNESCO.
  • Dinner on your own

June 6: Bilbao and Rioja. Night in Rioja

  • Drive to Bilbao. Visit to the famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao designed by architect Frank Gehry.
  • Back to Rioja.
  • Traditional Riojan lunch which will give us more opportunities to taste the wonderful Riojan wines.
  • Visit the Culture of Wine Museum, Dinastía Vivanco. The remarkable building includes five exhibition rooms. It is the culmination of the Vivanco family's dream, the fruit of their passion for wine and all that surrounds it. The museum is situated in the heart of the vineyards adjacent to their Bodega in Briones, a unique and historic location in the Rioja Alta, on the outskirts of Sierra Cantabria.
  • Winery visit
  • Hotel check in and dinner on your own

June 7: Rioja. Night in Rioja.

  • Morning. Visit two wineries in Rioja. One can be a traditional winery with wine tasting in Haro or nearby villages. The tradition of Rioja is very well represented by these centenary wineries that keep in their cemeteries bottles from the time of their founders. The other one will be a more modern winery.
  • Lunch
  • Afternoon dedicated to visit another winery or some of the small towns of Rioja like the the medieval walled village of Laguardia (13th century), capital of La Rioja Alavesa. Under the stone paved streets and homes of Laguardia it is full of old subterranean bodegas, and over them there are many historic monuments and sites, like the Gothic facade of Santa Maria de los Reyes church from the 14th century.
  • Dinner.

June 8: Back to Madrid

Leave to Madrid after breakfast to be there in the afternoon

 

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