Haro’s Barrio de la Estación is embarking on a new chapter as it sets out to become an international destination for premium experiences.
The new campaign, ‘Your world at El Barrio’, celebrates the distinctiveness of a place unlike any other in the world, where wine, cuisine, scenery, history and hospitality come together to create an experience that is hard to match.
The Barrio de la Estación in Haro is embarking on a new chapter with a clear ambition: to move beyond its status as a historic wine-growing enclave and establish itself as an international destination for experiences, capable of attracting travellers with its fine wines and winning them over through everything that happens around them. Under the new concept ‘Your world at El Barrio’, the six century-old wineries that make up this unique place present a new way of experiencing and telling the story of El Barrio, highlighting its history, heritage, gastronomy, landscape, culture and a form of hospitality deeply rooted in the local area.
This new initiative marks a decisive step in the evolution of El Barrio de la Estación and in its mission to project itself from Haro out into the world. It is a vision that views wine tourism from a broader perspective: wine as a gateway to a destination where visitors can discover, savour, explore, unwind and enjoy themselves.
Alex de Aranzabal, the new president of the Barrio de la Estación Association, states that ‘this new phase represents a very important step for the Barrio de la Estación. We wanted to share with the world not only our wines, but everything that makes this place a unique destination: its history, its cuisine, the landscape, the culture and a way of understanding hospitality that is deeply rooted in the local area. ‘Tu Mundo es El Barrio’ sums up precisely this way of understanding it: a place that is discovered through wine, but which offers much more than just wine’.”
El Barrio goes one step further
The historic façades of Haro’s Barrio de la Estación neighbourhood have been harbouring one of Spanish wine’s best-kept secrets for over a century. Here, clustered around the old railway station on the banks of the River Ebro, six renowned names — CVNE, Bodegas Gómez Cruzado, La Rioja Alta S.A., Bodegas Bilbaínas-Viña Pomal, Muga and Bodegas RODA — come together to form the world’s largest concentration of century-old wineries. The Barrio de la Estación, one of the global epicentres of wine and a place admired by enthusiasts from all over the world, is now taking a decisive step towards something even greater.
The neighbourhood is reaching beyond. Beyond wine, even though wine remains its heart and soul. Beyond its century-old walls, even though they are the guardians of its history. And beyond conventional tourism, to carve out a space of its own: that of a destination offering an authentic experience, where oenological excellence is merely the gateway to something harder to find and harder to forget.
Cuisine, landscape, culture
Haro is currently one of the most comprehensive premium tourism destinations in Spain. The region’s rich cultural heritage, the high standard of its cuisine – with the Michelin-starred Nublo in the centre of Haro, plus the renowned Echaurren and Venta Moncalvillo in the surrounding area – a network of establishments serving authentic Riojan cuisine that is a destination in its own right, and a range of accommodation that has taken a spectacular leap in quality in recent years. Proof of this is the opening of the town’s first five-star hotel, El Palacio de los Ángeles, with the Echapresto brothers overseeing the culinary direction at its La Ventilla restaurant. All this is set against the unforgettable backdrop of vineyards, mountains and the banks of the River Ebro that define this prestigious sub-zone of the Rioja Qualified Designation of Origin.
Throughout the year, the Barrio de la Estación offers a comprehensive wine tourism programme through experiences organised at its wineries and wine bars, including the official El Barrio Passport, which grants access to exclusive wines and premium cuisine.
Visitors who come to the Barrio do not come just to taste wines. They come to become part of the very heart of one of the world’s great wine-making legacies. And they leave with something that very few destinations can offer: the feeling of having been in the very place where it all began.
The Barrio as a benchmark for global wine tourism
Barrio de la Estación has also become an internationally recognised mark of quality in wine tourism thanks to its firm commitment to promoting wine culture. The collaboration between the wineries that make up this historic enclave now serves as a model for a collective project aimed at building a destination, revitalising the region and generating value through wine tourism, with La Cata del Barrio de la Estación as its finest example.
La Cata del Barrio de la Estación has been awarded the 2023 Verema Prize for ‘Best Wine Tourism Project’, an accolade that adds to a long list of awards received since its first edition. Notable among these are the ‘Best of Wine Tourism’ award from the global Great Wine Capitals network in 2015; the ‘Best Wine Tourism Experience’ award at the International Wine Challenge Awards Spain in 2016; and the ‘Rioja Capital Award for a Unique Initiative’, presented by the Government of La Rioja. Furthermore, La Cata del Barrio de la Estación received the “Best Wine Tourism Initiative 2018” award from Rutas del Vino de España, as well as the “Mass Vino” prize awarded by this association of journalists for the best wine tourism experience of the year.
Furthermore, the Barrio de la Estación Tours initiative was also honoured in 2023 with the ‘Best of Wine Tourism’ award from the Great Wine Capitals network, reaffirming the Barrio de la Estación’s international standing as one of the world’s leading destinations for wine tourism.
“Haro’s Barrio de la Estación has all the ingredients to become a leading international destination: a concentration of historic wineries unique in the world, great wines, extraordinary cuisine, a landscape of vineyards and the River Ebro, and a growing range of accommodation and experiences available all year round. We want ‘Tu Mundo es El Barrio’ to be an invitation to discover everything that happens around our wineries and to experience it at a leisurely pace, with all your senses. Our aim is for visitors to be drawn here by the wine, but to stay and return for everything else,” emphasises Alex de Aranzabal.
A message to the world
In this new phase, the Barrio de la Estación presents itself to the world with a renewed message, one that reinforces its global outlook and conveys a comprehensive and holistic vision. A proclamation through words and images that seeks to convey a sense of connection and camaraderie, whilst appealing to the joy of travelling and staying here. Your World is where you discover fine wines, where you savour authentic cuisine, where you explore a unique landscape, where history and pleasure come together, where you enjoy yourself, unwind and relax, where the extraordinary happens. In short, Your world at El Barrio.
