Here’s How to Take the Ultimate Biking Trip Through Rioja

Published by Travel + Leisure
Written By Jesse Ashlock

Charming villages and striking wineries form the heart of this beautiful Spanish wine region tour, which you can book for a once-in-a-lifetime experience with Travel + Leisure and Butterfield & Robinson.

A mountain range called the Sierra de Cantabria runs along the northern border of the Rioja Valley, and I had spent a good part of my morning riding up it. Behind and below me, the vineyards of Spain’s most famous wine-making region spread out like a crazy quilt, a long skein of morning mist hanging above them. The air was almost perfectly still, the only sound a light wind rustling the beech trees that clung to the rocky escarpments on either side of the road. Once in a while, I’d hear a faint church bell from a nearby village or the muffled blast of a Basque hunter taking aim at a wild pig in the woods.

I was on a new trip from the Toronto-based active-travel company Butterfield & Robinson, created in partnership with the editors of Travel + Leisure. My guide, Dale Sherrow, was way up ahead, riding with one hand while using his other to finalize our lunch plans on his cell phone.