“We are ahead of schedule” is a rare sentence on tour, but this heralded the start of our second Rioja tour as the Vueling flight arrived 30 minutes early into Bilbao.
Our first destination was La Rioja Alta – one of the most historic bodegas founded back in 1890.
The wonderful Lorena Alves hosted our tour and she brought alive the history of the estate, the importance of Haro as a wine centre and the development of the Rioja wine industry. We saw at first hand the six monthly racking that their wines undergo and it was also a pleasure to see their in house cooperage – essential when you have nearly 40,000 barrels in your cellar..
We then headed into lunch where we kicked off with a couple of wines from Rias Baixas – a relatively new project for La Rioja Alta – and then we started tucking into a selection of Alberdi Crianza, Ardanza Reserva and 904 Gran Reserva.
This was a cracking start to our tour.
Our coach took us on to Logroño, where we settled into our hotel, a short stroll from the tapas bars of Calle Laurel (and the Michaelangelo in the Catedral de Santa María de la Redonda for the more culturally minded).
