Laguardia

Laguardia is a small town in the province of Álava, in the Basque Country, and the capital of Rioja Alavesa, one of the most famous wine regions of Spain. It sits on a hill inside a wall that King Sancho the Strong ordered built, and five of its old gates survive: Mercadal, Carnicerías, Páganos, San Juan and Santa Engracia. The wine industry is the core of its economy, with locally grown grapes processed in numerous wineries under the Denominación de Origen Calificada Rioja. The birthplace of the fable writer Felix Maria Samaniego, a house of the seventeenth century, is now a wine museum. The medieval streets are best walked slowly, between cellars.