A Private Day with a Winemaker in Ribera del Duero
This request came from a couple from Australia, based in Sydney. They contacted us to create a 16-day itinerary with a strong focus on food and wine across Spain, Portugal and Southern France.
The Brief
We received this brief 11 months in advance, with multiple rounds of revisions with our clients. It covered several regions, with stays in characterful city hotels and boutique properties in rural areas.
Tapas tours, cooking classes — from paella to pastéis de nata in Lisbon — market visits, traditional meals, tasting menus… and one very specific request: They wanted to spend a day sharing the life of a small winemaker.
This was not their first wine trip. The couple had already visited many wine regions worldwide, and one of them had sommelier training.
They were not looking for a standard winery visit. They wanted something much more personal: time with a small producer, seeing how he worked and spending part of the day alongside him.
With that brief, we got to work.
The Challenge
There were two main challenges on this particular activity.
The first one, and the most difficult one, was finding the right winemaker: someone who was willing to spend a full day with the couple, had a story worth sharing and could communicate comfortably in English.
The second challenge was fitting the experience into an already demanding itinerary covering three countries, without turning it into an exhausting detour.
We decided to build the experience into the journey through Ribera del Duero, just before the clients continued on towards Portugal.
"“While speaking to the winemaker on the phone, I realised we had found the perfect match. The way he spoke, his attitude and the way he described his approach to wine seemed tailor-made for our clients, who had made it very clear that they were looking for something authentic; not a spokesperson for a winery. We had found it!”
Images are illustrative and have been curated to preserve the privacy and discretion of our guests.
The Day
The day started early in Madrid. We drove the clients to Ribera del Duero, where they met their winemaker: an experienced producer who had set up his small garage-style winery around 20 years ago and now produces high-quality organic wines.
The idea was simple: he would spend around six hours with them and take them into his working world. They visited two different vineyards to check the condition of the plots and then stopped at a machinery supplier in a nearby village. From there, they went back to the winery, where the conversation became much more technical on wine making.
They talked in detail about the winemaking process and the couple watched as one of the barrels was racked.
Lunch at the Winery
The day continued over lunch at the winery, joined by two members of the winemaker’s family.
Several of the winery’s wines were tasted along the way, making the meal feel less like a scheduled tasting and more like being welcomed into someone’s home and working life.
That was exactly what we had been looking for.
The Final Touch
To keep the experience going beyond the working day, we chose a small hotel located within the grounds of a winery for the clients’ overnight stay.
The following morning, the journey continued towards Segovia, where they had the traditional roast suckling pig (one of the requests for their itinerary) after visiting the Roman aqueduct, and then on to Ávila and its medieval walls.
