Calle del Marqués de Riscal
Honours Camilo Hurtado de Amézaga, Marquis of Riscal, a 19th-century liberal politician and journalist who also founded the Rioja winery that bears his title.
Calle del Marqués de Riscal recalls Camilo Hurtado de Amézaga, an aristocrat who split his life between politics, the press and wine. Born in Madrid in 1827, he moved in the liberal circles of the 19th century: he served as an attaché at the London embassy and founded the newspaper El Día. His ideas cost him spells abroad, and from France he brought back his second calling.
In Bordeaux he saw at first hand how the great French wine was made. Back at the family vineyards in Elciego, in the Rioja Alavesa, he had thousands of Bordeaux vine cuttings brought over and applied what he had learned across the border. From that effort came the winery that still bears his title, and with it much of modern Rioja.
The street holds a curiosity: at number 7 survives the Beti Jai fronton, built in 1894, the last great 19th-century pelota court in Madrid. It nearly vanished more than once, and today, restored, its galleries open again.