Amurrio
Araba/Álava · Basque Country
DO Arabako Txakolina10.364inhabitants
964wine documented
A municipality in the Ayala valley, in north-western Álava, on the banks of the Nervión. It was once a small hamlet of the Tierra de Ayala on the route by which Castilian wool was exported to Bilbao; it split from Ayala in 1842 and was granted the title of villa (town) in 1919.
First mention: Wikipedia states that the place name is documented from the 11th century, without specifying the document or the date.
The legend
vineyards in Tierra de Ayala 964; the word chacolín 1623 (Ayala); Amurrio txakoli mentioned by Galdós 1889; DO 2001–2002The chacolí of the Tierra de Ayala
Amurrio was part of the old Tierra de Ayala, the Álava valley that faces Bizkaia, where txakoli has been the house wine for more than a thousand years. The Regulatory Council notes that the cartulary of San Millán mentions vineyards in the Tierra de Ayala in the year 964 and that from the 13th to the 15th centuries ordinances protected the valley's vineyards. On 1 November 1623 the word chacolín appears in writing for the first time, in the archive of Arespalditza, in the neighbouring municipality of Ayala. In the 19th century the Ayala vineyards reached 550 hectares, and Pérez Galdós mentioned the txakoli of Amurrio in his national episode Vergara (1889). Powdery mildew, downy mildew and phylloxera wiped them out around 1919.
Alive today: Amurrio is home to the Regulatory Council of the DO Arabako Txakolina, recognised by the Basque Government in 2001 and ratified in 2002, which grew out of the association of small producers founded in 1988. Every spring the town celebrates Txakolin Eguna, which presents the new vintage. Small bodegas such as Bat Gara, in Lezama, make wine in the municipality.
Wineries and their wines
- Bat Gara 18 Meses
- Bat Gara Aromas del Sur
- Bat Gara Ioritz
- Bat Gara Sutsu
- Txakolí Uno
- Txakolí Urtaran
Wine towns nearby