With wine, drinking is not the same as tasting, eating is not the same as tasting, and seeing is not the same as looking….on this tour you will learn the keys to looking at the cultural landscape as you do with a painting and understand the great vineyard of Rioja.
The Ebro River is the backbone of Rioja, but it is the Oja River that gives its name to the region. And our first look is for the Ebro, which attracts the Mediterranean climate and traps it in a vertex of the valley that originates between mountains. The Sierra Cantabria, young and surly, and the old lady of the Sierra de la Demanda form a magical triangle that frames a landscape of singular beauty.
This bioclimatic capsule is not sealed, so each year the rain, temperature, winds,… of the region decisively influence the different terrains of La Rioja. The types of local soils and the orientation of the land also set the tone for each vintage, in pills that we call grapes.
This triangular Rioja landscape changes the color palette each season, so visiting it in autumn is not the same as in spring. Everything changes, the color of the leaves, the clusters, the mountains, the reflections of the river, the look is different.
The magic of the landscape that nature gives us is shaped at all times by the hands and traditions of the men of the earth throughout history. You will be able to perceive a mosaic of vineyards, in which each tessera (plot) bears the seal of the Rioja winegrower. In each vineyard the earth is woven, and as a whole we look at a cubist painting of the landscape.
All the civilizations that have followed one another in this territory since the Bronze Age have left their mark in different ways. The dolmens, the Celtiberian villages, the cave winepresses, the underground caves, towns, castles, religious roads, the routes of the muleteers,… also provide a unique landscape, which you can only appreciate more accurately under the gaze of this tour.