Ardoaraba, the great food and wine festival of the Basque Country.

Visit Vitoria-Gasteiz during the Immaculate Conception long weekend and recreate your senses with the biggest food and wine festival in the Basque Country, Ardoaraba.

During the Immaculate Conception long weekend, the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, dresses up to welcome Ardoaraba, one of the most important food and wine events in the Basque Country. Ardoaraba offers the inhabitants and tourists of the city of Vitoria Gasteiz 7 days full of experiences and sensations, a complete program in which we find the most important gastronomic products of Euskadi marinated with the best wines of our land. The bars, restaurants, hotels and tents of Vitoria-Gasteiz surprise us with commented tastings, workshops, events and a long list of experiences that fill the city center with life.

Vitoria-Gasteiz in the fog

The best producers of our land flock to this festival, resulting in the largest concentration of high quality products per square meter, can you imagine the best Idiazabal D.O. cheeses, the best Cantabrian anchovies and the best wines of our land in the same space? Stop imagining and write down in your agenda ARDOARABA with capital letters, a must for all lovers of gastronomy and oenology.

Checkbook: The Ardoaraba checkbook is the official currency of the event, a resource that can be obtained in any of the tents or information booths located throughout the city. The price may vary over the years but is usually around 13 €, a price that includes a gift that we can take home as a souvenir, the official cup of Ardoaraba. Each voucher book contains 28 points that can be exchanged in the Ardoaraba tents and in any of the establishments that collaborate in the event.

Points Ardoaraba

Tents and bars: The 4 tents located in the center of Vitoria-Gasteiz accompany and complement the more than 80 catering establishments that are part of Ardoaraba. Each of the bars that take part in Ardoaraba, selects a wine and a special pintxo for this fair, while in the tents, it is possible to taste cheese from one of the designations of origin of the Basque Country, a good talo with chorizo and many other products of our land.

Ardoaraba Tent

Hotel: Drinking and driving have never been great allies, so we recommend our readers to stay in Vitoria-Gasteiz during the 5 days of the event. By the way, book in advance, as accommodations in this city during Ardoaraba tend to be scarce. We stayed at the Jardines de Uleta hotel, a hotel that we liked very much and to which we dedicated an article that you can read: Hotel Jardines de Uleta Suites, your home in Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Entrance Hotel Jardines de Uleta

Txoko Gastronomic: The most dynamic, fun and educational space in Ardoaraba, a place where the great masters of our gastronomy and oenology meet to explain through tastings, workshops, demonstrations and many other experiences the “why” of the quality of the products of the Basque Country, products that have contributed to the great culinary culture of our people.

Txoko Gastronomic Ardoaraba

Thanks to the collaboration of BlogonBrands, Gasteiz On and Euskadi Gastronomika we had the opportunity to visit Ardoaraba and some of the most important tourist attractions in the city. Below we summarize the places and experiences that we fell in love with during our visit to Ardoaraba:

• Rioja Alavesa wine tasting.

Wine color tasting of rioja alavesa wine

• Idiazabal D.O. cheese tasting.

Artzai Gazta, Idiazabal

• Waska Restaurant

Hake Waska Restaurant

• Artium Museum

Artium

• Old Cathedral or Cathedral of Santa Maria.

• Escoriaza – Esquivel Palace.

Escoriaza Esquivel Palace patio medallions

ArdoaAraba creates edition after edition a more complete agenda with which to enjoy and learn, we have no doubt that we will be in the next edition and you?

Ardoaraba has innovated in this edition by offering commented tastings and experiences outside the Gastronomic Txoko, a small gesture, with which GasteizON has managed to bring the good atmosphere of the tent located in the Plaza de los Fueros to each establishment that has joined this proposal. The tents, which are largely responsible for the great atmosphere created in the city, are still located in the same places, in the same streets and squares:

The children’s corner and the tastings in the hotel and catering industry have been a great success in the 2016 edition of Ardoaraba.

Although our visit to Ardoaraba was not as long as we would have liked, it was enough to see firsthand the success of the catering tastings and the children’s corner, 2 experiences that had a large influx of people. We were lucky enough to enjoy a commented tasting on the native cider of Araba, and although the production of sagardo (Basque cider) in Araba is not as important as in the rest of the Basque provinces, we were delighted to taste the wines of the different Alavese sagardotegis that were present in Ardoaraba.

Ardoaraba continues to hold raffles and promotions throughout Ardoaraba, a nice detail that the Association of stores, hotels and services of Vitoria-Gasteiz has with all those who enjoy this food and wine festival.