Wine Traveler at Museo De La Cultura Del Vino

In the La Rioja wine town of Briones, Spain, we visited a most amazing and fantastic wine museum and wine cultural center. The museum was created and developed by Bodegas DiNastia Vivanco, a family with a long tradition of winemaking in La Rioja.

It is hard to describe this wine museum unless you have actually been here and gone through the exhibits. It is comprehensive yet not overwhelming. We have nothing like this in the California wine country. We do have Copia in Napa, but this is much much more.

The museum does not focus on Rioja wine, but wine in general. It is a self guided tour that takes the visitors through 6 wine themes and four floors that include the history of wine, how wine is made, works of art depicting wine, and a magnificent collection of corkscrews, serving vessels, wine goblets and glasses. There are several video presentations which are short but brilliant. One of our favorite video exhibits was the time-lapse photography of a year in the vineyards. From bud break to harvest, the year of the vine is presented to the viewer on a collage of screens.

Another favorite exhibit is the wine aroma station. Here the visitor can test their senses for twenty different aromas found in various varietals of wines. We have done this elsewhere, but nowhere did we feel the different aromas were as exact as at this museum.

The tour ends with a degustacion (wine tasting) where we each taste and drink a delicious glass of Rioja wine. This is a very memorable experience, one I will not soon forget.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos inside the museum, so we are unable to show photographs of any of the exhibits. The top photo is the medieval town of Briones, the middle photo, the museum, and the bottom photo, a sculpture outside the museum.