Haro Wine Festival Comes to Rioja, Spain

If red wine is your thing you won't want to miss out on the chance to be legitimately soaked in it at the vino fuelled haro wine festival, which takes place in Rioja, Spain, every year on 29 June.

You won't be alone as thousands of revellers don their obligatory white t-shirts and flock to La Batella de Vino (wine battle) to partake in the 300 year tradition where spraying each other with the local red wine forms part of the celebrations of St Peter's Day.

What starts out as with mass on a mountaintop later descends into waterguns, pistols, buckets and jugs of red wine being thrown at each other as the battle unfolds with over 130,000 litres of vino tinto to get well and truly soaked with.

If all that sounds like thirsty work, the revellers are given free sausages and other local delicacies to keep up their energy levels.

While the origins of the historic festival are somewhat hazy it's one of the region's greatest tourist attractions in one of the most prestigious and important wine growing regions in Spain.

Here's a taster of what happens:

What Haro Wine Festival, La Batella di Vino
Where Haro, La Rioja, Spain
When 28 - 30 June, 2016
Website

Another chance to get messy is the Tomatina tomato fight taking place on 31 August, also in Spain.

Learn more about Rioja:

via Fine Dining Lovers

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