Haro to Vittorio and Muga Winery Tour

Today we were to Vittoria and deep into Basque Region and the Capitol city of Vitorio.

Before I continue, you might also want to visit my friend Ken Boardmans blog about this trip as well. We are on the same adventure but he comes at it from a bit more introspective and historical perspective. Here is his site address. a different angle with a focus on and detail. crazyguyonabike.com Once you're on the site just type in Boardman

We were back on the bikes today & left the Rioja region but before we left we visited the Muga winery. They make very nice wines predominantly red but not exclusively and; they follow very traditional methods. They age all of their wines in oak barrels that they make at the winery and they even have coopers on site who make the barrels.

So now for some fun facts about this winery as it really was a most unusual tour.

Owned and operated by four generations of Muga family members
All the grapes are grown on their own land located within 20 km
They are the only winery to make their own barrels on site - we saw the coopers.
To filter some of their white wine they float egg whites across the top of the barrels and as they seep to the bottom they pick up any loose particles - Really! Never saw this before!!!

The Cooper's at work, how do you train for this?

Yes, this guy is cracking and separating the egg whites from the yolks!

This was a very good year! I tried to slip the last bottle in my bag, but just couldn't pull it off.

After the wine tour, and trust me we did very little tasting as riding u mountains and drinking wine, just don't mix well, we had a 60km ride to Vittoria. There were two good and challenging climbs so we ended up with about 3,300 ft of climbing over 60km. Along with the climbs we rode by potato farms either harvested or in the process.