Familia Martínez Zabala

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: XX years of shared history

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: XX years of shared history

In 1991, Bilbao started out on an ambitious project to transform and revitalise the city that included the most visible symbol: an agreement with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to build the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

The venue for signing sign the agreement was not chosen at random. Bodegas Campillo, located in La Rioja Alavesa, opened in September the previous year based on the well-known and accurate maxim that wine is both art and culture. Bodegas Campillo expressed this harmony in a singular building in which it started to age wines that deserved such a setting. That same year, it started making a wine - Reserva 1991 - that would be served six years later in the opening ceremony of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

A quick look back in history… The Basque Government contacted the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and asked them to set up the museum in Bilbao, drawing a parallel between San Francisco/Napa Valley and Bilbao/Rioja Alavesa. They invited the Foundation to visit Bilbao and took the delegation straight to Vitoria (where the Basque Government has its seat), and from there to Bodegas Campillo. The winery was the scene of the final agreement between the two parties: Bilbao was the city chosen to house the Guggenheim Museum.

It is an honour for Bodegas Campillo to celebrate these 20 years of shared history now, to admire a dream that has become reality and, naturally, raise a glass to all the successes achieved and to those that are still to come. We are also proud to be able to participate in the best way we know, as we did in the inauguration, with one of our wines, Campillo Crianza 2014.

In Campillo Crianza 2014 we have created a commemorative edition for the 20 years of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. It isa single-variety Tempranillo, aged in second-year American oak barrels for 18 months followed by bottle ageing since October 2015.