Haro and Laguardia

Rioja has one big city, one wine capital and one very pretty town, and they are three different places. Day trips from Bilbao go to the second and third.

Haro — the working wine town

If Rioja has a capital of wine rather than of administration, this is it.

Haro sits in Rioja Alta, and its defining feature is the station district — a cluster of cellars that grew up around the railway when it arrived, several of them among the oldest continuously operating houses in Spain. They are within walking distance of each other, which is unusual and is why so many tours start here.

The featured day gives Haro a centenary winery with a guided tour and a tasting, over about an hour and a half. That is the substantial cellar visit of the day.

The town itself is pleasant rather than spectacular — a working place, with a handsome old centre and a lot of wine in it. Haro is also known for the Batalla del Vino, an annual wine fight held in summer, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Laguardia — the one people photograph

Twenty-five to thirty minutes away and across a regional boundary: Laguardia sits in Rioja Alavesa, inside the Basque Country.

It is a small walled medieval town on a rise above the vineyards, closed to traffic inside the walls, with the Sierra de Cantabria behind it. Beneath the houses run old cellars cut into the rock — the town is undermined by them, which is the detail that tends to stay with people.

The featured tour gives Laguardia a cellar tour with two wines plus an hour and a half of free time. That free time is the eating window, and Laguardia is the right place to use it.

If you have seen one photograph of “a Rioja town”, it was probably this.

And Logroño, which the tours skip

Worth knowing so you are not surprised: Logroño is the largest city and the capital of the La Rioja region, and most Bilbao day trips do not go there.

That is a reasonable call. Logroño’s draw is Calle Laurel, a dense street of pintxo bars, which is an evening rather than an afternoon and does not combine well with two cellar visits and a coach home. If Logroño appeals, it is an overnight, not a day trip stop.

Which town is “the prettiest”?

Laguardia, by broad consensus, and the day trip’s structure agrees with it — Laguardia gets the free time, Haro gets the serious cellar.

The mild technicality is that Laguardia is in the Basque Country rather than in La Rioja proper, so “prettiest town in La Rioja” is a question whose usual answer is not, strictly, in La Rioja. Nobody minds. See is Rioja Basque.

Doing both in a day

That is precisely what the featured tour is: an hour to Haro, the cellar and tasting, half an hour across to Laguardia, a second cellar and two wines, free time, and back.

It is a full day and a well-shaped one — one town for the wine trade, one for the walking, both for the drinking. The alternative days out of Bilbao that visit only one winery generally keep Laguardia and drop the Haro cellar, which is the wrong half to lose if wine is your reason for going.

See the Haro and Laguardia day trip