What is Ribera del Duero?

To travel through the Ribera de Duero is to enter one of the most important wine regions in the world. A place where the wine culture speaks its own language. So much so that in this area the Tempranillo grape became long ago the Tinta Fina or Tinta del País, delimiting a geographical area around the Duero riverbed where this Castilian variety finds an exceptional seat that after centuries of edaphoclimatic adaptation offers unique qualities for the production of high quality wines.

To travel through the Ribera de Duero is to enter one of the most important wine regions in the world. A place where the wine culture speaks its own language. So much so that in this area the Tempranillo grape became long ago the Tinta Fina or Tinta del País, delimiting a geographical area around the Duero riverbed where this Castilian variety finds an exceptional seat that after centuries of edaphoclimatic adaptation offers unique qualities for the production of high quality wines.

This wonderful region, with two millennia of winemaking history, oozes wine on all four sides. Nature has long been at the service of wine here, offering heaven and earth to men and women who knew how to shape the cradle of Tinto Fino at will, among a mosaic of sheets and folds in which the infinite vineyards intermingle with cereal fields and small wooded masses. This vegetable watercolor is framed in a territory with an infinity of different backgrounds, a palette of colors that starts with the grayish white of the limestone soils, passing through all the browns and reddish of the clayey ones, until reaching the softness of the greens and yellows of the meadows and cereal fields. Summer gives us long days of clear skies, cool nights and warm afternoons, grapes in full growth and nature expressing itself at full lung. Autumn invites us to harvest, a year of training and the time has come to jump into the field, each winery puts into play all its accumulated knowledge and its technological potential to transmit to the wine the effort and affection that a whole year of work in the field entails. The end of the grape harvest and the beginning of winter gives us one of the most wonderful landscapes, the vineyards are getting dry, covering the Ribera with a reddish and mahogany blanket that will delight the visitor. It is time to take care of the new wine, to begin to savor the new fruits, to plan the next campaign and for the winemakers to enjoy with calmness together with those wine lovers who want to be seduced by their wisdom. Spring invites us to witness the rebirth of the fields, the earth shines, the vineyards begin to awaken, the rivers overflow with water and the fields turn into lush green galleries, the Ribera smells of life and also smells of young wine.

A journey through the region reveals itself to us as a good reserve wine, a gentle, friendly, honest and wise landscape, full of hills aged by the passage of time and small canyons, a countryside scenery dotted with ancient villages whose houses greet us with centuries-old dignity from their walls of ashlar and adobe. The traveler will be immediately impregnated with the aroma of wine that oozes from this region. Constant fields of vines, both bush vines and espalier vines, magnificent wineries established at the foot of the vineyards in the Chateau style, small villages full of subway cellars dug in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, men and women in constant movement towards the vineyards, or towards the wineries and cooperatives ... tractors, trailers, tools ... wineries and more wineries. In addition, thanks to the signs indicating the regulatory council we can find out at every step in what area of the Ribera we are and what wineries we can see from our route. Prestigious names will appear on both sides of the road, we will pass by vineyards that produce some of the most famous and well-known wines in the world, in harmony with tiny plots of goblet-grown vines owned by small local families.

During our itinerary we will visit some of the most renowned wineries in the region, businesses belonging to families with a winemaking lineage that are lost in the mists of time. Some of these families participated in the push that was given in 1982 to this region to be certified as a D.O. and are recognized as the architects of the qualitative evolution, internationalization and competitiveness of the wines of Ribera de Duero. From their hand we will go into the heart of the winery, we will learn about the winemaking process, the vineyard, fermentation, the qualities of the area and the grapes, the aging process, and finally we will have a guided tasting of some of the best wines from each winery.

We will witness a harmonious blend of tradition and modernity, a success represented by certain wineries that have been able to adapt to the technological opportunities of the new times without renouncing to continue to evolve their crianzas, reserves and grand reserves in subway cellars excavated more than four centuries ago. These ancestral places, excavated by hand and reaching a depth of 30 meters, continue to meet, despite advances in the field of oenology, the ideal conditions for the optimal evolution of wine in oak barrels. We are referring to optimal temperatures and humidity throughout the year, total absence of light and noise, and why not, the smell of centuries-old history that oozes from its walls, which to some extent is present in these modern wines dressed in ancestral clothing.

On our tour we will contemplate the traces of the history of the Ribera and learn a little more about the different vicissitudes that shaped this unique territory. We will make our way through Romanesque churches, traditional architecture, picturesque villages and various fortresses and palaces of which the castle of Peñafiel, capital of the western part of the Ribera, is the best example. In the eastern part of the D.O., Aranda de Duero stands as the historical and economic capital of the Burgos part, where we can contemplate the church of Santa María, the late medieval layout of its streets and the subway cellars, some of them excavated more than 800 years ago. A stop along the way for lunch in one of the best traditional restaurants in the region, will help us to rest the experiences of the day, exchange impressions and taste the local cuisine.

It will be a pleasure to walk with you through the Ribera de Duero, show you its most beautiful wineries and accompany you in the descent to the dawn of modern winemaking through its subway cellars, to finally touch the sky tasting some of the best current wines produced in this unique land, through whose Ribera, water is transformed into wine.

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