Biking the Wine Landscapes of Northern Spain

If driven by enological and geographical curiosity, you cross the North of Spain from the Mediterranean Sea to the Portuguese border or the Atlantic coast and incorporate a slight zigzag to your progress, you may complete your journey having added a count of 20 to 30 well-differentiated wine regions to your history. Some will be official DOCs (Classified Designation of Origin), others will have different classifications or none at all, but their mere existence as distinct entities speaks to underlying differences in other realms; soil, vegetation, climate, culture... in sum; differences in the elements that, grouped and active, allow a LANDSCAPE to "sprout."         ...         Descriptively, the journey begins in the Catalan lands of the Priorat -a place of cult status in modern oenology- and Montsant. This is; a few kilometers from the Mediterranean coast.
Closer or further away, depending on our zigzag, but always to the north, stand THE PYRENEES, an omnipresent mountain range that, even when unseen, constantly "shelters" us from the North and its "inclemencies." It is worth noting here that protections against the North are a constant across most of the territories where our proposals THE WINE LANDSCAPES and ULTRA PREMIUM WINES BIKE TOURS unfold.

When THE PYRENEES spill out and dissolve into the Cantabrian Sea, the protective baton is taken up by the geological tendon of the Sierra de Cantabria, which tenaciously carries the challenge -leaving La Rioja, at its feet- until the moment the earth rises again and we begin to refer to it as the CANTABRIAN MOUNTAIN RANGE. This is a directly wild territory that will not yield a single kilometer in its mission to "protect" us from the North, until a new interweaving -or clash- causes it to expand and become a network of ranges and ravines that we might call the Galician Mountains. These hills have the privilege of hosting the place where The Earth "ends"; the Roman Finisterre.

In that aforementioned advance, we will have left behind, first in Aragón, south of the Pyrenees, the "comarcas" -sometimes also DOCs- of the prepirinean Somontano -with its "snow vineyards"- , the deserts of Los Monegros and Las Bardenas -with their "desert wines"-, the "Far West" of Calatayud, Cariñena -with its "Wine of the Stones"- and the vast plains of Campo de Borja, sheltered by the 2,300 meters of the omnipresent Moncayo.

Straddling THE PYRENEES and the aforementioned Sierra de Cantabria, the zigzag becomes a scribble as we enter Navarra, a territory with such diverse internal geography that it hosts 5 clearly differentiated DOCs within what is officially a single DO.
Without interruption in our theoretical advance, fully protected by the Sierra de Cantabria and differentiated into Oriental, Alta, and Alavesa, emerges La Rioja, the name that has done the most to link the words Spain and Wine globally.
Everything cited thus far both dresses and is dressed by the Ebro Basin, the ancient Roman "Iber," the River that gave the Iberian Peninsula its name and whose north we traverse.

The CANTABRIAN MOUNTAIN RANGE takes over in our imaginary journey, and at its feet lie some of the most extreme territories of the EMPTY SPAIN where, despite everything, the DOs of Arlanza, Cigales, and León -the "wines of the land"- still "resist."
The gigantic cauldron of El Bierzo -with renewed oenological vigor- halts our westward movement with a rugged geography enclosed by various mountain chains, all bordering the 2,000 meters of altitude.

And South of everything narrated here, almost from the borders of Aragón to the Portuguese frontier, The Duero River flows calmly. Driven by its waters and those of its tributaries, new LANDSCAPES, new DOs, and new temptations arise. Ribera del Duero is undoubtedly the most recognized, if not fully known, for beyond its popular "golden mile" it extends through a vast, diverse, and quite extreme territory. We speak of the Soria Ribera del Duero, the Triangle, more Platinum than Gold, of the Burgos Ribera, and the high, hidden mining lands of Fuentenebro on the borders of Segovia.

The river continues, giving rise to Toro, a city, a DO, and perhaps the first wine to reach America. And the Duero keeps flowing, gathering strength, colliding with the Portuguese border, turning, and creating Los Arribes del Duero, a different LANDSCAPE encased in granite walls that lend their character to its distinct wines. This is the place where our imaginary journey ends and, perhaps, the real one begins.            

After five long years - long in business terms - researching the vast territories of the northern half of the "EMPTY SPAIN" we have dared to present a unique proposal among the relatively numerous offerings on the market that combine cycling and wine tourism.
Five long years in which, moving away from the conventional cycle routes that cross NORTHERN SPAIN, we have immersed ourselves in a search for territories, landscapes, terroirs, winemakers, viticulturists, and other figures linked to the land. ... Sometimes they have taken us to their vineyards high in the mountains or on the moorland. Other times, we've first undertaken the task of linking wines with landscapes, with winemakers and viticulturists who are almost extreme in their passion, and then we've corroborated our findings with them to incorporate them into our list of
THE WINE LANDSCAPES and ULTRA PREMIUM WINES BIKE TOURS.
The result are the proposals we now offer in this website.