Haro, beyond the capital of Rioja

Write: Monica Uriel. Journalist

Visit haro, 'Capital of Rioja' already fully fledged, allows you to enter history. This through the largest concentration of centenary wineries in the world. In addition to discovering that technological innovations are used there such as robots that wash barrels and scanners that select the grapes.

Or tour the vineyards by segway and balloon. Now you can also learn about the production of local cheeses and finally, receive a wine therapy treatment. This, of course, in the hotel room.

The visits to these wineries take place in the neighborhood of the station and there are seven in total. In Haro, officially since last March, allows you to contemplate how work is done in a cooperage and in a cutlery. They are two craft trades that tend to disappear. Likewise, you can walk through corridors of 'cemeteries' with centuries-old wines stored in their niches.

La Rioja Alta in Haro

There are already few wineries with their own cooperage and one of them is La Rioja Alta, known for its wine Ardanza Vineyard. Founded in 1890, it is one of the first wineries in The Rioja who started making visits. There you can see how the barrels are made in the oven, which take two days each. They also have a park of 30.000.

Likewise, few wineries hand-racked each barrel by candlelight like this one does. Always every six months with the aim that the wine suffers less, work carried out by 30 rackers.

In the La Rioja Alta winery tradition and modernity go hand in hand. Well, for three years they have been using an optical grape selection scanner that takes a photo of each grain. The one that does not meet the parameters by means of air is discarded, which represents about 18%. This is one of the largest wineries that this German machine uses. It was originally devised for the selection of olives.

In addition, a robot washes the barrels, with combined steam and water cycles, but in such a way that the aromatic is not lost. Within your area of R+D they tried an optical system for racking but were not convinced.

The wine that comes out of its 450 hectares in The Rioja 65% is destined for export and currently they sell more in New York that Madrid.

CVNE winery in Haro

Formerly the wine left this neighborhood of the station by train bound for France. This is how the tracks that are preserved in the nearby wine cellar CVNE (Wine Company of Northern Spain), founded in 1879.

In a warehouse of 800 meters are the 400 barrels that are used for the aging of the Imperial, its flagship. The nave, without columns, has a particular system of metal tie rods from 1909 devised from Gustave Eiffel. It is the same system as the Eiffel Tower, a true revolution that influenced the production of wine. It currently reaches 140.000 liters of Imperial.

In this winery you can see the first original electricity cables. Haro y Jerez de la Frontera they were the first Spanish cities to have light. It was thanks to its economic prosperity derived from the wines.

La CVNE winery keep a surprise inside. It is a 'graveyard' in which the fungus penicillium grows happily from moisture. Due to its closeness to the Ebro riverIt also protects the centuries-old bottles found here from light. The bottles covered with mushrooms - the oldest one dates from 1888 - are distributed in the different niches.

The visitor can walk between the niches but cannot pass through a door with dozens of bottles. As it appears in an exposed plan, since their keys were thrown to the ebro in 1979 when checking its creators. They would not all be alive a century later, on the occasion of the centenary, so they decided that none would drink them.

Muga and the cubero

Without leaving the station neighborhood, riding a Muga, founded in 1932, it is possible to see its cooperage. Also its cutlery where the only active cubero of Spain, Jesús Azcárate. This is the one who makes the vats by hand and 'with the eye of a good cuber'.

The saying derives from the fact that there is no exact measurement of the staves (boards), which will tame to form the wall of the vats and tubs. That is why they will not always have the same number of staves. It will be the cube that calculates it.

Before working, the oak wood has been left to dry naturally for six years. There are a total of 12.500 barrels in Muga (Haro), where you can see five vintages of wine growing at the same time. Another curious process that is contemplated there is the clarification of the deposits by the traditional method of fresh egg white.

And to explore the 250 hectares of vineyards, Muga It organizes in addition to the traditional visits, others in a balloon. Although the latest is in segway. This winery, like La Rioja AltaIt has private dining rooms inside.

The production of a product that combines very well with wine, cheese, can be visited for a short time without leaving Haro. It is exactly in Martinez dairy, a family business that has just renovated its facilities for guided tours.

Founded in 1961, the cheese The Cameros continues to use the family recipe that its founders Jesús Martínez and Justi González began in 1961. The milk reaches 120 kilometers around and the French method is still used. Letting the molds from refining the bark develop, combining it with olive oil baths, which is the most natural anti-mold that exists.

Cheeses from La Rioja

The pretty line of the it would is the cheese of cured and semi-cured goat PDO Camerano, which follows an ancient recipe of The Rioja. Its production is very limited, as there are 13 livestock farms in the region. From them the milk is obtained for its elaboration.

In the old days, fresh cheese was produced in the mountains, and those that were not sold in the valleys returned to the mountains. There where it was transformed into cured and semi-cured. At the end of the visit to the cheese factory an interesting cheese tasting in which the five senses participate. Always in charge of the cheese master Javier Martinez, one of the four sons of the founders.

After whetting your appetite with the cheeses you can eat at the restaurant terete, In the heart of Haro. They serve a vegetable stew and roast lamb cooked in a century-old oven. Very close, in Casalarreina, a few kilometers from Sajazarra, listed as one of the most beautiful towns in Spain, is the restaurant The Cave of Doña Isabela.

It was built in a building of the seventeenth century that housed a winery. Its innovative gastronomic proposal with Riojan roots is completed with a sweet wine of its own elaboration. It is known as 'Postremus', made from overripe grapes.

'Wine therapy' massages

Instead, the grape seed seed is the one used for the highly recommended wine therapy massages. Like the one that offers 'Veronica. The hands of the wine ' by the hotels of The Rioja. As well as for a 'vinotherapeutic' mud wrap.

Wine mud is rich in polyphenols, flavonoids, enzymes, coenzymes and vitamins A, C and E, which improve circulation. Also the skin and the grape seed are applied to the pilling facials.