Vivanco Museum #189
Vivanco Museum: to educate, teach, spread…
The Vivanco Museum of Wine Culture covers 4,000 square metres, and is devoted to valuing the relationship between man and wine over 8,000 years of history. The Museum includes 5 permanent exhibition halls, a hall for temporary exhibitions and, outside, the Garden of Bacchus, a collection of grape vines, that boasts more than 220 varieties from around the world. This place was created with a single goal: to educate, teach, spread and interact with wine as an element of civilization. And all of it thanks experience, sensitivity, respect and innovation.
One of the great icons of the Culture of Wine
The idea of its establishment was born in the late 1990s and seemed to be fantastic. Today, almost two decades later, this Museum is respected as one of the great icons of the Culture of Wine in the world. Inaugurated in 2004 by H.R.M.
«I invite you to briefly visit this special place»
Señor Santiago Vivanco, the president of The Vivanco Museum of Wine Culture, lawyer, philosopher and poet, tells about the unique center, founded by his family: “In 1998 I got to work on my father and our family’s dream, the construction of the Museum of Wine Culture. I wanted a space where, once visited, everyone could understand the close and special symbiotic relationship that has been created between wine and man. In 2001 I created the Foundation, with the idea of having a tool that would help us to disseminate and delve into all this heritage. To paraphrase one of Neruda’s poems, he came snailed, frizzy (…) You’ve never fit in a glass, in a man. Wine is always more. That is why I have dedicated and will dedicate my life to telling and transmitting it”.
The Museum was inaugurated by King Juan Carlos I in 2004 and tried to sort and make sense of 40 years’ worth of collecting by my family. In that sense, all the pieces are original and with a history of their own that brought them here. This is a universal Museum. Another very important point. We have not stopped in a given place, it takes you through the history of the Wine Culture from its first traces until today and its different forms across the world. Another major feature is its educational, interactive nature with a great audiovisual support. I knew that, in addition to sharing our passion, this Museum had to teach; to show why wine has always been with man and we cannot do without it. And we had to share it with the world. For this reason, we adapted a Museum without architectural barriers with a technical floor and information in Braille for the visually impaired. I invite you to briefly visit this special place.”
International reference on wine
As an outreach centre, the Museum is an enterprising and ambitious initiative, which has become an international reference on wine, its history, winemaking techniques, wine research and all the cultural and artistic manifestations that revolve around it. It is a large, modern, functional space which houses the collections that the family has acquired over many years.
There are you can discover the origin of wine, the most typical grape-growing soils in each part of the world, the origins and development of Rioja, what phylloxera is, how the vineyards are tilled, etc.
The vine and the grape
All the wine museums, which was existed before opening our Vivanco Museum of the Culture of Wine were missing something. To a greater or lesser extent, they had tools for tilling the land, machinery, processing methods, historical documents… But they never took into account the fruit that gives rise to wine: the grape. That is why Vivanco family wanted to pay this tribute to the vine and the grape. In the Garden of Bacchus, you can find more than 220 grape varieties, from their botanical origins to the most modern table and wine varieties from across the world.
Worldwide recognition
It is hard to tell briefly about such a global institution. Every cultural wine tourist must visit it at least once in their lifetime, but let’s add one more touch to the portrait of the institution: here is managed to collect a unique, probably the world’s largest collection of documents relating to the production and consumption of wine.
In 2008, the gathering received worldwide recognition:The Best of Wine Tourism Award in the Art & Culture category given by The Great Wine Capitals Network to the Dinastía Vivanco Foundation Documentation Centre.
And, probably, it would not be right to miss such an important detail of this story: the Vivanco family is famous around the world not only for its unique Wine Museum, but also for the wine itself, which will be produced at the family winery under the supervision of an oenologist RAFAEL VIVANCO SÁENZ.
Vivanco has been selected, for the second year in a row, as one of the 50 most amazing wine experiences in the world, and once again enters the exclusive Top 50 of World’s Best Vineyards: a list of wineries on five continents that any good wine lover and travel lover should not miss. Not only for its good wine, but also for its landscape, its architecture, its history, its gastronomic and cultural offer.
However, everything that this talented family undertakes deserves the highest awards – the best vineyards, expositions, collections, wines. So, this is a place not to be missed!