Bodegas Irache — Attraction in Ayegui

also known as The Fuente de Vino...

Clocking in at nearly 500 miles, the Camino de Santiago, or The Way of St. James, is one of the world’s more famous long-distance treks. This primitive path was created for those making the medieval pilgrimage to see the remains of St. James the Apostle in the city of Santiago de Compostela. Created during the 9th century, this path now sees thousands of modern-day pilgrims traversing the width of Spain, with many taking 30 or more days to complete the historic trail.

As you trek through the Navarra region, an area renown for its local wine, you will come across one of the many quirky sites of the Camino: the wine fountain. The small Navarra town of Ayegui is home to the Monasterio de Irache and its attached winery, the Bodegas de Irache, which was established in 1891. The wine fountain was created in order to provide motivation for fatigued followers of St. James.

Walk up to the gated fountain, and you’ll see pilgrims filling scallop shells (which are consistent symbols along the path; many pilgrims will carry or wear the shells as they complete their journey) and water bottles with the blessed wine from the monastery. The chilled red wine is light and refreshing, but it’s strongly alcoholic. Tired or dehydrated trekkers should exercise caution and...

After -of course- having visited their wine tap, we went in their building to see if we could taste/buy more wine and perhaps even a tour? Unfortunately, there were no more tours, but a lady from the office was so friendly to show us around their cellar anyway. We highly appreciated this.

She knw a lot about the company and their products, which made a real good imprssion. We bougth some wine, oil and souvenirs and left with a very...

Only reason it does not get a 5 (which it actually deserves considering we were not expecting this and drinking good wine from a fountain is something we never thought we would experience) is that the webcam did not work.... which would have been awesome as we called our wives to tell them to check out the website so that they could see us during our trip and see us drinking wine (and water ;) ) from...