Peñafiel in a day, a two-hour tasting facing the castle and your bed a step from dinner.

Peñafiel has no train, and there is no bus between its wineries. So this plan cheats in favour of the wine: you arrive in the morning, leave the car at the hotel and do not move it again until the next day. In between, one of the most serious tastings in the Ribera, the ship-shaped castle and its wine museum, a wood-roasted lamb and a long dinner in the same building where you sleep.

From vineyard to plate

9:45 · To the hotel. The Hotel AF Pesquera occupies a 1922 flour mill on the Paseo de la Estación, at the foot of the castle. Leave the car and your luggage; the room, when it is ready.

10:00 · Pago de Carraovejas. Five minutes by taxi to the hillside opposite the castle. Landscapes with Soul is two hours on the estate with four wines from different Alma Carraovejas projects and four bites from the kitchen of Ambivium, its restaurant, for €85. It runs Wednesday to Sunday from 10:00, booked on its website or on 983 878 020. If you want more, Grandes Crus de Alma is three hours and seven wines for €135.

12:30 · The castle and the Provincial Wine Museum. Another short taxi ride and you go up the hill. The castle is visited with a guide and the museum on your own: vineyard, winemaking and the history of the denomination, in an hour and a half, for €6.60. From October to March it opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10:30 to 14:00 and from 16:00 to 18:00, and the last castle visit is forty minutes before closing: arrive no later than one o'clock.

14:00 · Lamb at Molino de Palacios. Walk down to the Duratón. In this old mill the churro lamb is roasted in a wood-fired oven and is ordered when you book: a quarter for every three people. Lunch only, Tuesday to Sunday.

17:00 · The Plaza del Coso. A stroll round the square of wooden balconies, enclosed by more than fifty houses, where the festival bulls are run in August. From below you can see the whole castle.

20:30 · Dinner at Origen-es. The gastronomic restaurant is in the hotel itself. The Esperanza menu costs €75, or €110 with wine pairing, with the wines of the Fernández Rivera family, from Tinto Pesquera and Condado de Haza. From Wednesday to Friday it serves dinner only; at weekends, lunch too.

The next day

You have breakfast, collect the car and set off with a clear head: two hours to Madrid on the N-122 and the A-1, fifty minutes to Valladolid. If you have the morning to spare, the Cistercian monastery of Valbuena is about 20 km away, down the Duero.

If you want another winery

The two wineries in the town itself can be reached on foot from the hotel. Protos, at the foot of the castle, combines its ageing cellar dug under the hill with Richard Rogers's building, and sells its visits in an online calendar; Peñafalcón, a family winery on Calle Pisuerga, does its visit with a tasting for €30, by appointment. They fit the afternoon of the first day well instead of the square.