Rioja
Spain's most historic wine region has been shaping the world's understanding of Tempranillo for over a century — and today, a new generation of winemakers is challenging everything their grandparents built while honoring everything they stood for. From century-old bodegas where Gran Reservas age for decades in American oak barrels hand-built by the region's legendary cooperages, to contemporary producers crafting single-vineyard wines that have redefined what Rioja can become, this is a region living confidently in both centuries at once. Our relationships provide access to private tours of architectural landmarks like Frank Gehry's Marqués de Riscal and Zaha Hadid's López de Heredia pavilion, tastings of Gran Reservas with thirty or more years of bottle age pulled from cobwebbed library cellars, pintxos tours through the Michelin-studded streets of San Sebastián — arguably the world's greatest food city per square meter — visits to traditional cooperages where American oak is still shaped by hand, access to small family estates whose wines never leave the region, and exploration of medieval villages and underground cellars carved into hillsides throughout La Rioja. Wine provides the gateway to Spain's most celebrated wine country.
CULINARY ARTS
Pintxos tours through San Sebastián — home to more Michelin stars per square meter than anywhere on earth — where generations of chefs have elevated small bites into high art, Logroño's legendary Calle Laurel where each bar is famous for a single dish perfected over decades, jamón Ibérico cutting demonstrations with master cortadores explaining the craft behind Spain's most prized ingredient, Idiazábal smoked cheese cave visits in the Basque highlands, txakoli wine pairings overlooking the Bay of Biscay, cooking classes with Michelin-starred chefs exploring the intersection of Basque and Riojan cuisine, La Rioja's famous patatas a la riojana workshops using locally grown peppers and chorizo, chuletón de buey (massive bone-in ribeye) grilled over vine cuttings at traditional asadores, visits to Haro's century-old wine bars where Rioja was born as a commercial wine region, and seasonal white asparagus experiences during the prized spring harvest.
CULTURE & LEISURE
Standing inside Gehry's titanium Guggenheim in Bilbao where the building itself is the first masterpiece before you ever reach the galleries, visiting the monastery at San Millán de la Cogolla where a monk scratched the first written words of the Spanish language into the margins of a Latin text a thousand years ago, wandering the medieval streets of Laguardia where the entire village sits above a labyrinth of underground wine cellars carved into the rock centuries before anyone called it Rioja, floating over vineyard rows at sunrise in a hot air balloon as the Sierra de Cantabria catches the first light along the northern ridge, hiking those same mountain trails in the afternoon where the views stretch across the entire Rioja Alta to the Ebro River valley below, exploring the Vivanco Museum where wine culture is treated as fine art — one of the few places in the world where a two-thousand-year-old Roman wine vessel sits alongside a Picasso.
ARTISAN TRADITIONS
Traditional cooperage tours where master craftsmen shape American oak staves into the barrels that define Rioja's signature style — a process largely unchanged for over a century, espadrille-making workshops in the mountain villages where alpargatas have been hand-stitched from esparto grass and canvas since the Middle Ages, Ezcaray's renowned wood carving and textile traditions including the blankets and fabrics that have made this Sierra village famous across Spain, ceramic studios in the medieval towns of La Rioja where potters work with local clay in styles dating to the Roman occupation, visits to active monasteries where monks still produce wine, cheese, and preserves using methods passed down through centuries of monastic life, and leather workshops in Basque Country villages where artisans craft goods using techniques that predate industrial production.