Haro is the capital of the Rioja Alta, a mid-sized river town with twelve thousand inhabitants and an astonishing density of wine. It sits where the Tirón river comes down to meet the Ebro, with the Sierra de Cantabria on the north side and the blue ridges of the Sierra de la Demanda far away to the south, and the soil of the surrounding slopes gives the wines their reputation for elegance rather than muscle.
The best of the town lies in the Barrio de la Estación, the district beside the old railway station, where several of the great historic bodegas were built in the late nineteenth century. The reason is simple: the railway arrived in the 1860s, and merchants who had learned winemaking from Bordeaux, where the vine disease phylloxera had devastated the vineyards, suddenly had a way to ship Rioja out to the rest of Spain and abroad. Houses such as López de Heredia, CVNE, Muga and La Rioja Alta still make wine in the same quarter, and the old stone buildings and tall brick chimneys give the neighbourhood an industrial charm that is rare in a wine region.
Haro also likes to claim a first: it was reputedly the first town in Spain to have electric street lighting, switched on in the 1890s. Whether or not you check the detail, the old quarter around the Plaza de la Paz, with its bandstand and handsome balconied town hall, is a pleasant place to sit. The church of Santo Tomás has an elaborate Renaissance doorway worth a look.
On the twenty-ninth of June comes the Batalla del Vino, in which crowds climb up to the Riscos de Bilibio above the town in purple and white and soak each other in red wine. It is deliberately silly and enormously popular, so do not plan to ride through that morning.
The riding to and from Haro is smooth and easy, through vineyards on gentle roads, with little hard braking and a surface that is generally good. Traffic is light except around harvest, when tractors with loaded trailers are common. Haro has fuel, parking and any number of bars; the thing to do in the evening is to follow the crowds to the narrow streets of the Herradura, the old tapas quarter, and eat standing up. If you are still riding afterwards, remember that the Spanish limit for alcohol is low, and a glass of Rioja is not a free pass.