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- Wine tourism refers to tourism that includes experiences around wine. Wine tourism is growing in Spain, and many Spanish wineries and wine states do not offer wine tours or guided visits as part of their regular services yet. We recommend you pay attention to the recommended wineries section in our webpage. We propose wineries that have good facilities for the visitor.
- Don’t drink and drive: Most of the wine routes we propose imply driving. We recommend you taste many wines, but not drive afterwards. You will have time to drink wine during your stays in one of the recommended villages or cities, or during a long lunch followed by a relaxing stroll.
- Learn about wine: The explanations during guided tours at different wine estates are often very similar. We recommend you prepare a list of questions you can ask the guide or wine maker. We propose some examples below:
- Do you purchase grapes or is all your production from your own vineyards?
- How old are the vines used to produce the wine we are tasting?
- Do you harvest manually?
- Wandering about vineyards: Walking among vineyards is a very pleasant experience, but if you don’t have such an opportunity, you can still walk along the roads bordering the vineyards. In any case, pay attention to what you see, as there are many interesting things to observe:
- The Soil: Soil has an influence on wine, and it is actually one of the most important aspects of the terroir concept. When considering a specific terroir, you also need to take into consideration other things: the rain level, the relief, the orientation to the sun. Pay attention and you will notice that the vineyards may lie on very different soils from one region to the other, or even in the same region (limestone, clay, pebbles, etc.).
- Smell: Surely, this can sound too poetic for some people. We recommend you inhale deeply whilst you are walking. When you later smell the wine produced on that estate, it will remind you your experience in the vineyard.
- The disntance among vines: This impacts how grapes are harvested. If there is little space for a machine or if the vines are not wired this most probably indicates hand picking. This is considered the best way to harvest grapes. Although slow and expensive, it minimizes damage. Harvesting by machine offers great speed and flexibility.
- Pay attention to the age of the vine: An old vine can be beautiful in itself. Vines can live and produce for fifty to seventy-five years. As they get old their root systems get deeper to extract more nutrients and they produce less grapes. This combination means that wines made from old vine grapes tend to have a more concentrated flavor and a more complex character.
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