While today"s image of beautiful fall colors in Rioja is serene and peaceful, the people of this area are hard at work harvesting grapes at 14,800 different vineyards across the region. And soon the 600 wineries in this smallest Spanish province will begin the lengthy process to turn this year"s grape harvest into its world-famous Rioja wines. (To get an idea of how tiny La Rioja province is, it makes up just 1 percent of Spain"s land area and only about 0.67 percent of Spain"s population lives here.) While winemaking techniques have evolved and improved over the thousands of years that wine has been made here, each year around this time locals and visitors gather in the region"s capital of Logroño to celebrate the wine harvest and see a traditional example of the first, uh, step of this process—crushing newly harvested grapes by stomping them with bare feet.
Falling for Rioja
More Desktop Wallpapers:
-
Let s crack the code
-
Happy Bee Day to you
-
Celebrating the UN’s International Day of Families
-
Why’s it called a spelling ‘bee,’ anyhow?
-
Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica
-
In the Highlands for Saint Andrew s Day
-
Sea Otter Awareness Week
-
Here, fishy!
-
Honoring those who served
-
Avatars of the Wolf Moon
-
Góða ólavsøku, from the Faroes!
-
What kind of bird laid these eggs?
-
Nothing plain about it
-
Nursing the world to health
-
Holey moley–it’s National Doughnut Day!
-
World Teachers Day
-
Salt ponds of Maras, Peru
-
Lunar eclipse
-
Queen Elizabeth s Platinum Jubilee
-
How lovely are your branches