La Rioja Wine Tour with Two Winery Visits and Tastings from San Sebastian

I was quite disappointed in this tour. The your guide was very stressed, he got very angry in traffic and we had a hard time understanding his English. Even though he was early to pick us up (we didn't have time to finish our breakfast) we were 20 min late to the first tour and had to run up a hill just to find that the tour had started without us and our spots were replaced. We were able to join in anyways but had missed the first part and had to apologize to the winery tour guide. After the first wine tour we went through a town that we still don't know the name of, and the tour guide gave us two sentences about the medieval buildings while we jogged through the streets to have time for some food before the next winery. We stopped at a bar to have some pinchos, we were told that we could have three, and drinks with that. Nothing special, and we didn't really have time to eat them anyways before we had to drive again since we were so behind on schedule. We arrived 15 minutes late for the second winery tour as well, and once again we missed half the tour and had to apologize. After the tours we had some coffee and then drove back. I felt like I had to keep the conversation going the entire day, I was hoping to learn a lot about Rioja and the places we visited, but at this point I just felt stressed, tired and annoyed, so there were not much talking. The drive was much longer than we thought, over 2 hours, but it's a beautiful landscape. The actual wine tours were good, with guides from the wineries, I just wish we'd had heard them from the beginning. I bought this tour as a birthday gift to my travel company, and it was NOT worth the money.

We have gone on Viator tours in a number of countries and could not have been more satisfied. This experience was the exception. We spent over 1,000 for a private tour for four of us and rightfully expected something special. Our tour guide, while a nice guy, was really nothing more than a taxi driver. We rode in silence until one of us asked a question. Even then, his answer was typically a two sentence response. In fact, we learned more about the La Rioja region from our actual taxi driver from the airport! In addition, we had four adults and expected a comfortable two hour ride each way. Instead, three of us were crammed into the back seat of a car with the middle person missing out on most of the scenery. The tour guide was not used to the car and on four separate occasions, slammed on the breaks for no apparent reason. In addition, out of the whole La Rioja region, we saw two wineries within 5 minutes of each other. The tours within the wineries themselves were very good, but were overshadowed by the terrible driving experience. To his credit, our tour guide did offer to drive us around to other areas of La Rioja, but because of the cramped driving conditions, we just wanted to head back to the hotel. We recommend Viator re-evaluate this tour provider or at least ensure the tour company clearly understands and is committed to deliver the level of service Viator expects of private tours of this kind.