bodega el fabulista

Very nice environment in The midle of The medieval city.Great food and wine of course, you can also find some niçe art.

We toured El Fabulista winery with a group. The winery is small, producing less than 50,000 bottles per year, all sold in the region. The wine tasting after the tour proved the quality of their 5 products. The three aging cellars are 20+ feet below ground level and their pressing area is also below ground. The guide said that there are 300 (!) wineries below the city of Laguardia. Incredible.

If you want to find out about traditional wine making methods, which they still employ, then thus us worth a visit. Unfortunately our tour, which takes about an hour, was in Spanish though, a lovely young woman on the tour kindly translated for us.

We took this wine tour based on a recommendation from our hotel and are glad we did. Our tour guide was very personable and knowledgeable. She explained all aspects of their processes very well and gave us a much better understanding of winemaking in Rioja. We were able to sample several wines and very much enjoyed them. The only downside was that they were not able to ship wine to the US. Make sure you leave some time to explore the city of Laguardia and go up in their tower. The views were spectacular.

We were part of about a 12 person visit and all seemed to enjoy the tour and learn from it. Very interesting not just for the info re the wines but also about the caves and the history of them. Our guide was very personable and knowledgeable although she was a touch difficult to understand as she tended to talk a little bit too quickly at times. There is no hard sell at the end to buy their wine and we certainly were provided with two decent size amounts of wine for tasting.I personally would recommend this and if you do go - enjoy.CheersBrian - HomeExchange50plus

We were on the first tour Monday morning. I was thrilled to get to see some of the famous underground caves of Laguardia. After seeing a new cave at a newer winery, this is a marvel given it's 900 years old. This is a small winery, and the wines they make are made for everyday drinking…great prices. Fun tour, lots of laughs. Cute labels (inspired by the fabulista!) Overall, really interesting and worth the tour.

Taste other wines. Go to a restaurant to see an old cellar. This is only for those who like to go through a pure marketing ploy. Our guide was not knowledgeable. She can't go beyond what she has memorized. (I wish we didn't rush out from Vivanco to make the 5pm English tour.)

I visited the winery with my family - we were lucky as nobody else turned up and had the tour with Raquel, who is lovely, completely for ourselves. One full hour of explanation, saw the bodega, we could ask questions and Raquel was happy to accommodate that we preferred to sample a white and a red and not two reds. I only missed that the sampling of the wine was not guided, as in, she was not telling us how to circulate the wine inside the mouth, air it or so. She opened the bottles for us. Not big and fancy as other bodegas, but more real.

Small family run winery with quirky innovative "fable themed"wine labels doting their reds and whites. Innovative display and the best I've seen showing how cork is obtained for their wine bottles. In their show room is a rather small cement wine crushing tank where wine is still crushed by humans stomping the grapes for hours on end. However, the real treasure to behold are the underground and extensive wine caves where wine is stored, cellared and tasted. Delightful and relatively inexpensive gift shop. And the wines are extremely value driven, and worth purchasing if one can accommodate their transport.

The town is walled off and has innumerable passageways connecting the small city in a Labyrinth-like set of underground caves that were meant for protection and hiding in ancient times and now have become a winery at this wonderful enchanting winery.When you enter La Fabulista winery you enter to the area where the grapes have to be carefully brought in as the city itself cannot support cars due to the risk of the floors caving in due to the weight of the automobiles. The wineries namesake is derived from the fact that the site of the winery was the site of Félix María de Samaniego's home, a famous spanish writer of fables.The tour takes you through these underground set of caves with a wine tasting at the end. It is a pleasant wine tour in a wonderful city; this is a small operation with average wines but the experience is worth the price of admission! The tour guide was extremely knowledgeable of not only about this site but about the "correct" way to taste and appreciate wine. . .she was probably one of the most knowledgeable tour guides in our whole La Rioja trip (and we visited many wineries)! She was an absolute pleasure to hear her immense knowledge of wine!Come here you will not be disappointed and if you come during the harvest season you can enter these large barrel vats and stomp the grapes!

Narrow pedestrian streets lead us past innumerable pavement cafes and the Plaza Mayor. Under the streets of the town lies an extraordinary secret: the entire subsoil is riddled with ancient wineries or "caves", excavated underneath the houses and streets, at a depth of 6 m. We will be entering one section to visit La Fabulista winery. Even the name is unusual. The cellars are located under the home of Félix María de Samaniego, a Spanish author (1745 – 1801), whose book “Fabulas” was a bestseller in its day, hence the name of this tiny winery and the labels of the bottles. We are shown where the grapes arrive by tractor, are tipped into a concrete vat and then actually trodden by foot, a very rare occurrence these days. We then descend the steep, narrow stairs to the cellars below the town. Here in dank, cool tunnels, the wine is fermented and aged. Finally we come to a nicely decorated tunnel where we enjoy the tasting. This is a small operation, but the guide is outstanding and the explanation of the whole process, including a fascinating discussion on how to taste and appreciate wine, is much appreciated. We are even persuaded to purchase a selection of their wines, which are in fact rather good. If you come at harvest time you will have a chance to stomp on the grapes!

As compared with some of the other tours we took of larger, more innovative wineries in La Rioja region, this was impressive in its simplicity, our guide's enthusiasm, and the level of detail she gave us about the Fabulista wine-making process and about wine tasting itself. Loved seeing the caves and tunnels under Laguardia's lovely exterior. This tour came as a part of our hotel package, and we were so glad that it did, otherwise we may not have experienced it!

Very interesting winery, really worth a visit, cellars built as an underground Getaway system from the Moors in 10th century. Small winery but as the label says it does taste fab, October good time can see tractor navigate microscopic streets and men still trample the grapes.

If you are claustrophic, be careful.....very steep stairs into a cave...Otherwise, a very nice tour.

What a pleasant find in the Basque country.. oldy worldy.. hidden in a fabulous walled village. The guide was so enthusiastic we had to ask her to slow down so we could keep up. The place oozes history and smells of good wine. By the time we reached the hallowed tasting area we were already sold on the product. The information was excellent and accurate and we learned a lot about wine in general that will be useful in life..for instance "stay clear of the cheese, when tasting wine, as it masks the taste of inferior wine". Make the effort to find this place and go to the modern bodegas later, if your are sober enough...