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Like us, we know you appreciate delicious food and fine wines.  There is nothing more relaxing than enjoying a good meal and a glass of your favourite wine at the end of a long working week.its the best way to let steam off. Drinking a good wine delivers a real sense of place and character and brings a little slice of the vineyard into your own home.

First hand experience of La Rioja

Imagine how much more your appreciation would be enhanced if you could experience the sights, sounds and flavours of your favourite wine region first hand.you don’t have to be a massive wine connoisseur, just a fan!   There are dozens of wine tasting holiday packages available, ranging from the commercial tourist treks that  whisk you  through the terroir on an air-conditioned coach to the more intimate walking holidays that give you the space and time to walk through a wine region, drinking in the atmosphere and sampling the local food as well as tasting the wines.

La Rioja

We think an active holiday for wine buffs is best done at your own pace.  For a truly personal holiday, we like companies that offers tailor made packages to the smaller, beautiful and often underappreciated regions of Spain, such as La Rioja for example.going with a small group of friends and a trust worthy guide will help you appreciate wine even more.

Why La Rioja

The gateway to La Rioja is Bilbao, famous for Frank Gehry’s titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum and the magnificent Mirador de Tolono is less than an hour away with magnificent views across the wine growing region.you can indulge in some of the finest region’s restaurants whilst be enjoying the best wines in the La Rioja area.The local food comprises of seafood from the northern coast and meats from the plains to the south of Rioja.sommeliers serve up each course with a different wine to compliment the food.

going to a traditional winery gives you sample of how much care and attention goes into making a bottle of wine.one the oldest wineries called Muga uses traditional methods in winemaking, using only oak barrels and casks.If your a wine lover and enjoy active holidays then La Rioja is the perfect place to go.you can experience the lifestyle behind the wines and enjoy the history of the region and culture. Packages of varying lengths can be booked, but if nine days walking in the countryside, even if it is to drink some superb wines, sound like too much effort there are shorter weekend options that take in the main attractions and deliver a more intensive, but equally rewarding, experience.

At Classic Wine Direct we’re pretty upfront about what we do – we can’t compete with supermarkets on price so we offer wines from off the beaten track instead. We believe that these wines are more interesting and quite simply, tastier. However, it can be difficult for wine drinkers to understand the true value of a wine.

Back in 2006, Jean-Manuel Spriet, the then chief executive of Pernod Ricard UK, sent shockwaves through the wine trade by admitting that many of the “half price” wine deals in supermarkets were actually a rip-off.

The fact that a leading player in the wine business had admitted that consumers were being conned caused many a raised eyebrow.

half price deals are not in fact deals at all according to Spiret. Put simply, a bottle reduced from £7.99 to £3.wines are more likely to be worth £3.99.99 in the first place.

they mark up wines at selected regional outlets for a short period to cover them legally then mark it down. wine customers will believe they are getting a bargain price. Confused? the general idea is.

the wine industry is believe the main wine drinker is obsessed with the £3.99 price tag.the cheap price to customers affects the ways the suppliers are producing their wines.

Spiret thinks consumers know they are getting misled and they get use to it. this leads to the wine trade not havng any money.

Spiret’s gives us an inside view of the true tricks in which wine is sold by the big retailers. More worryingly it gives us an insight into what the big retailers really view their customers to be, namely lazy and ignorant.

the wine industry is not the only industry where these marketing practices happen.

two thirds of the wine sales are taken up by the supermarkets.

If the regular wine drinker believes that he is getting £7.99 of value from a £3.99 bottle then it follows that it will be much harder for the independent wine retailer to sell something whose real value is (and always was) £7.99.

There is, of course, no end in sight to this type of price fraud – the subjectivity of a wine’s value leaves this particular sector open to all sorts of underhand practices.

However, if the political mood continues to be against discount selling for alcohol, it will be interesting to see how the big retailers find a real price for wines they have knowingly mis-sold for the last 10 years.