A town of the Tierra de Barros (Badajoz), the main wine centre of Extremadura and home of the DO Ribera del Guadiana. It arose in the 13th century as a hamlet of Mérida under the Order of Santiago; from “Almendral”, for its almond trees, it came to be called Almendralejo.
bullring with bodega, 1834 (renovated 1912); Oenological Station 1915; cava since 1983The bullring that keeps wine beneath its stands
Almendralejo, in the heart of the Tierra de Barros, built its bullring in 1834 and gave it a use that no other in Spain has: beneath the stands, instead of pens or storerooms, a bodega was installed with large earthenware cones able to hold some 30,000 arrobas of wine. So, while bulls were fought above, the harvest of a town that lived off the grape fermented below. The ring was renovated in 1912 in its Neo-Mudéjar style and still keeps twenty-nine of those cones. A few years later, in 1915, the Oenological Station was built, the laboratory and wine school for the whole district, whose building now houses the Regulatory Council. The Roman memory of wine in the area, with the grape-harvest mosaics of neighbouring Mérida, completes a tradition the city claims as its own.
Alive today: Almendralejo is home to the Regulatory Council of the DO Ribera del Guadiana, in the Oenological Station building, and is the only municipality in Extremadura within the DO Cava. It has the Museum of Wine Sciences, in a former alcohol distillery, and every spring holds the Wine and Olive Show. Bodegas such as Vía de la Plata, Romale and the Viñaoliva cooperative are still active.