Dinastía Vivanco Museo in La Rioja

While in La Rioja, we visited Dinastía Vivanco Museo de la Cultura del Vino (Museum of Wine Culture) in Briones. This museum was very well done and was created by the foundation of the winery/bodega. You may have to go to their home page and select your language (British flag is English). If you are ever in Rioja and you are remotely interested in wine, this place does a fantastic job of showing you the entire process. We highly recommend it. They start with a short film in Spanish with no subtitles that we could have done without. But after that, it was awesome.

They separate it into 5 physical spaces on different levels. The first is "Birth, Growth, Maturity" and they show you the start of winemaking thousands of years ago and the evolution of tools & instruments used. They have antique wine presses. This room has some interesting video of what they do to the vineyards throughout the year. It also has a video and audio from inside a fermentation tank with some animations that show & hear what happens in there.

The second area is called "Keeping the Essences" that shows you how people make barrels, corks, bottles, etc with cross sections of French and American oak showing you how French oak is more porous (allowing more air through during barrel fermentation or aging).

The next section is "The Dream" that shows you all the work involved with racking, pumping, filtering, bottling, shipping, etc. There is also an exhibit with some hands on smelling of all kinds of aromas from red and white wines.

Before you enter the 4^th area, they have a door into the barrel room of the winery so you can peak at that. It's a massive room. The 4^th area itself ("Art and Symbol") has tons of art related to wine. My favorite was a painting of an infant Bacchus (aka Dionysus) drinking wine.
The final permanent exhibit area, called "Open, Serve, and Drink", has an amazing collection of corkscrews (over 3000). They also have jugs and decanters and sampling glasses. After this they take you to the tasting room.

Finally, on the outside of the museum, they have almost every single grape varietal in a garden with a map to each and every grape type so you can go look at it. We couldn't find Petite Sirah which was disappointing, but we did manage to find all the others we cared to find including Syrah. Of course, we were there at the best time of year in early Sept as the grapes are definitely hanging at that time.