Golf and Wine in La Rioja – and beyond…
Golf and Wine in La Rioja – and beyond…
We spotlight almost 150 Spanish courses on this website, publishing a national Top 100, along with regional rankings for five geographical areas on the mainland, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands. Our Northern Spain listings extend to thirty courses, covering a large area to the north of Madrid that stretches from Girona in the east to Vigo in the west.
We were recently invited through the European Golf and Travel Media Association to visit the province of La Rioja, located next to Álava in the Basque Country, where the city of Logroño in the Ebro valley is at the centre of the wine trade in the famous grape growing region. It seemed like the ideal opportunity to discover just how good the golf product was among the vineyards of northern Spain.
Having flown into the industrial port city of Bilbao ahead of schedule, there was a bit of time to kill ahead of the press trip so a short tour of city landmarks was called for, starting at the world-famous Guggenheim Museum on the banks of the Nervion River. Clad in glass, titanium and limestone, the museum of modern and contemporary art is an astonishing building, regarded as one of the most spectacular structures ever built in a Deconstuctivist style.
The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum in Casilda
Iturrizar Park was next on the cultural agenda – well, it was a
rainy Sunday afternoon so it seemed best to stay dry indoors – with
the ninety-five paintings from the “Goya and the Court of
Enlightenment” collection the main attraction for those interested
in perusing the work of Spain’s most important artist of the late
18th and early 19th centuries.
Then it was off to one of the many local tapas bars to relax with a glass or two of Rioja and some tapas (or pintxos as they’re called in the north of Spain) before being transferred further inland to Logroño for a reception and welcome dinner at the Kobanova restaurant, which allowed attendees to interact with their hosts on the 4-day trip for the first time.
Further gastronomic delights would be
enjoyed in nights to come at the highly regarded restaurants of La
Quisquillosa and La Cocina de Ramón but, no disrespect to the owners
of these two fine establishments, perhaps the best evening of food
and drink was experienced in the company of El Educator en Vinos, José
Ramón Jiménez Berger, who led the party of twelve journalists round
half a dozen small tapas bars along the narrow Calle del Laurel,
within Logroño’s Zona tapas y vinos, where a different Rioja and
accompanying tapas was served up in every hostelry – all very
social, of course, and a great way to interact with the locals.
The first stop on our golfing excursion
was the municipal
El Campo De Logroño on a site that
the local council decided to redevelop as a nature reserve in the
late 1990s, converting an old landfill site on the outskirts of the
city into a thriving recreational space for the local citizens. One
of the first new civic amenities to appear early in the new
millennium was an 18-hole golf course, designed by the reputable firm
of Stirling & Martin Golf Architects.
El Campo de Logroño is a big course
that’s more than capable of hosting large-scale amateur or even
professional events with the ability to play to almost 6,750
metres from the back tees. Don’t let that sort of length deter you
from playing here – even with the par five 4th at
more than 600 metres classed as the longest hole in Spain – because
there are three more manageable sets of tees available, ranging
between 5,000 and 6,000 metres.
Club de Golf Sojuela sits twenty
kilometres further south, in more elevated territory, and it’s a
Seve Ballesteros design which has been in operation for over a decade
now. With sensational views across La Rioja to the mountains in the
north, the course is set out across a hilly landscape that is best
tackled by buggy as there are quite a few climbs to be made during a
round here. A bunker renovation program is currently under way thanks
to recent investment in the facilities by new owners.
Bodegas were traditionally warehouses
where wine was stored but many of them have now evolved into modern
businesses like Hotel Finca de los Arandinos, situated close to the
Sojuela course, with a chic 14-bedroom boutique hotel, restaurant and
spa integrated into the winery. Other wineries, like the Marqués de
Vargas which the press group also visited, are more traditional,
preferring to keep accommodation buildings separate from the wine
production and storage facility.
The Vivanco winery in Briones takes the history of wine production to a whole new level with the Vivanco Museum of the Culture of Wine, a massive educational centre devoted to the relationship between man and wine over eight thousand years of history. Recognised as one of the best, if not the best wine foundation in the world, the museum really needs a full day’s visit to fully appreciate the many different wine artefacts that are on display within its numerous display rooms.
Completing the golfing triangle to the
south of the city of Logroño,
Rioja Alta Golf Cub is
positioned around half an hour’s drive from both El Campo De
Logroño and Club de Golf Sojuela, close to Santo Domingo de la
Calzada, one of the main stages on the Christian pilgrim walk to the
shrine of Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de
Compostela. Designed by Enrique Saenger and opened in 20006, the
Rioja Alta course is an engaging track with several prominent aquatic
features in play on the back nine.
Immediately north of Logroño lies the
Basque Country province of Álava and outside the small town of
Urturi you’ll find the outstanding Campo de Golf Urturi, home of
Izki Golf,
within the Izki Nature Park. This is a thriving club with nearly four
hundred members and the course is now back on the PGA European Tour’s
Challenge Tour rota, after hosting a couple of similar events fifteen
years ago. Seve Ballesteros is credited with the design of a lovely
woodland layout that will fully test the professionals who tee it up
here again next month.
The EGTMA press trip to La Rioja ended
at Izki but there was still an opportunity for Top 100 Golf Courses
to go the extra golfing mile by dropping into see another couple of
courses listed within the Top 5 positions in our Northern Spain
listings.
The first of these was the 18-hole layout at Real Sociedad de Golf de Neguri, a mid-1950s design by Javier Arana which occupies a coastal property just outside Bilbao at Punta Galea. Neguri’s a very private club that shuns publicity so it’s not the easiest of golf facilities to gain access to but perseverance on our part eventually paid off and it was certainly worth the effort to survey a course that very few outsiders ever get to see. “Understated elegance” sums up the ambience at Galea, with tall Atlantic pine trees dominating the estate, especially on the back nine.
Our final port of call, Real Golf de Pedreña, also boats a wonderful seaside setting some 90 kilometers along the Cantabrian coast from Bilbao, with the course set out on a headland site above the Bay of Santander, next to the golden sands of Playa de Somo. Architect David Williams has been working on this 1928 Harry Colt design for a few years now, gradually breathing new life into this old masterpiece. Seve Ballesteros learned the game here and many other local players have followed in his footsteps as the little village is reputed to have produced more professional golfers per head of population than any other place in Spain.
The north of Spain will not immediately spring to mind as a golf destination for many people but if you’re the sort of person who might like to play in a more temperate climate, perhaps mixing a game of golf in the morning with an afternoon excursion to one of the many dozens of welcoming wineries before relaxing in a tapas bar with a glass of Rioja and a selection of pintxos in the evening then La Rioja demands serious consideration.
Press trip participants stayed in one of three Logroño hotels (Hotel Marqués de Vallejo, Hotel Gran Via Logroño and Hotel Mercure Carlton Rioja) all of which proved to be really comfortable downtown bases for a golfing trip to La Rioja.
Thanks are due to GolfinRioja’s Urko Zabala Asua, a very capable tour guide whose services were greatly appreciated by all the media correspondents who took part in the short trip. Pepe Notivoli, Manager of the Department of Commerce and Tourism at Logroño City Council must also be thanked for the local authority's financial backing of the visit.
Jim McCann
Editor
Top 100 Golf Courses