Winery, wine tourism destination and training center. Pazo Baión is multifaceted

Pazo Baión has established itself as a training center, regularly welcoming enology, gastronomy and tourism students interested in the keys to our project

«Education is constantly redone in praxis» said the prestigious educator Paulo Freire, valuing practical knowledge when training people in any area of knowledge. At Pazo Baión, we believe in this idea, so we are committed to transforming our property into a small training center that regularly welcomes students and professionals interested in learning about our project.

Students of vocational training cycles, undergraduate and master’s degree students, people trained in world-renowned centers such as the Basque Culinary Center, cooperative members and professionals… Hundreds of people from all over Spain and abroad come to Pazo Baión every year to learn practically, turning our project into a training center in multiple areas: enology, gastronomy, hospitality, tourism, cooperative…

Through this commitment to training, we not only make our project known to people who work in our sectors and to future professionals. Rather, all of us who are part of Pazo Baión learn. We educate ourselves by training others. Discovering realities, learning, techniques and strategies that we were unaware of. Expanding our way of seeing the world.

Learning by teaching is an immense pleasure and helps us to continue innovating and perfecting our way of working. For this reason, Pazo Baión is also a training center in addition to being a winery and a space for wine tourism.

1. Wines, history, culture, nature and education

We often say that Pazo Baión is a project based on four basic pillars: the elaboration of Rías Baixas, the history of a property with five centuries of life, the thousand-year-old wine culture and splendid nature. We must add a fifth fundamental element to these columns in Pazo Baión: education.

Our professionals are continuously trained to discover the most innovative viticultural techniques and apply them in the care of the vines and the production of the only single-estate Albariños. This allows us to combine the ancient knowledge we inherited from our ancestors with cutting-edge techniques and technologies and produce wines that modernize our winemaking legacy.

Likewise, we are also permanently training to offer the best wine tourism plans, firmly betting on quality tourism and great added value. Sustainable tourism committed to its natural environment and local culture seeks to create meaningful experiences that last in the memory.

With education, we can make our wines, culture and history of a property that has witnessed the passage of history and the beauty of incredible natural spaces shine.

As we know the importance of education, we wanted to turn Pazo Baión into a training center where students, trainers and professionals can continue learning… And to teach us.

A practical training center in which to share all our experiences and continue collecting knowledge about wines, history, culture and nature. A place where education occupies a predominant position and can welcome valuable visits from anywhere in the world.

2. The secrets of making the only single-estate Albariños

When considering Pazo Baión as a practical training center, it is impossible not to think of enology and viticulture students and professionals who, like us, dedicate themselves to the noble art of winemaking.

For this reason, our vineyards and winery annually welcome students from enology training cycles and professionals from the sector. They all discover first-hand the work of our viticulture team, focused on caring for over half a century-old vines that provide us with the only raw material we use to make the wines of our winery: their wonderful Albariño grapes.

At the Pazo Baión training center, students can learn how important jobs such as pruning are carried out and how vines and grapes are cared for throughout their life cycle, from sprouting to harvest.

If the vineyards are an open-air training center, the Pazo Baión winery is a learning space between centuries-old walls. In our winery, students and professionals can learn how only single-estate Albariños are made, that is, wines made using only grapes from our property. And also discover innovative technologies, such as the concrete egg that we use to raise Vides de Fontán. An exciting journey through the culture of wine from tradition to the avant-garde and the sector’s future.

3. The culture of wine and its gastronomic relevance

Wine occupies a central place in the gastronomy of our country. Understanding how the elaborations pair with the different products and dishes is crucial to offer unique gastronomic experiences. For this reason, the unofficial training center of Pazo Baión receives students of hospitality and gastronomy, as well as researchers in this area, year after year.

During their visit to our facilities, students and professionals immerse themselves in the soul of Albariños, discovering all the information that the visual, olfactory and taste phases of wine tasting show us.

The Pazo Baión team teaches the students of Vocational Training cycles, and reference centers the different aromas of our Rías Baixas and what is the best way to pair each one of them.

The most delicious dishes must be accompanied by the wines that best suit their characteristics, making the combination perfect and becoming a first-class gastronomic experience.

Both viticulture and gastronomy are areas in which continuous research is being carried out to perfect the preparations and conquer all the senses of people who enjoy delicacies such as wine.

By turning Pazo Baión into a training center open to all kinds of institutions and students, we want to help spread the wine culture and highlight its role in our gastronomy. Education is a mechanism for the dissemination of knowledge.

4. A quality wine tourism destination

As it could not be otherwise, tourism also exists in our informal training center. So far this year alone, we have received visits from students from a Professional Training cycle in Tourism from Extremadura and students from the Master’s Degree in Planning and Management of Destinations and Tourism Products from the University of A Coruña.

The future professionals of the Spanish tourism industry, one of the world’s most powerful and highest qualities, can discover in our property what the Pazo Baión wine tourism project consists of and what our value proposition is.

In this sense, the estate of the old Casa de Fontán is the ideal place to observe how a tourist space can serve to recover the history and culture of an area, turn it into an asset, take care of it and value it.

Like the other sectors, including the wine sector, tourism has been transformed by the digital revolution. We show tourism students and teachers how we work and what our wine tourism experiences consist of. And they offer us innovative ideas to continue growing and offering sustainable and enjoyable tourism through all the senses.

5. The importance of continuous training

When we think of education, inevitably, our minds imagine young students, in their early twenties, at the beginning of their adult life. But education is essential throughout our lives. At the Pazo Baión practical training center, we disseminate our knowledge among students from institutes, faculties and centers and among active professionals. Experienced and talented workers from whom we can also learn. Winemakers, restaurateurs, sommeliers, cooks, hoteliers, professionals in the tourism sector… Pazo Baión has a lot to offer. And they have a lot to offer us.

Pazo Baión is a project launched by the Condes de Albarei cooperative, thanks to the effort and sweat of all the families that are part of it. Hence, we periodically become a training center for cooperative members from different parts of Galicia, Spain and abroad to learn the keys to our winery and wine tourism space. In recent months, we have welcomed cooperative members from places as close as Castilla-La Mancha and a little further away, such as Turkey.

From the time we are born to when we die, we never stop learning. Therefore, education is a transversal issue in our lives and crucial to have the best professionals to offer high-quality products and services. In our case, critically lauded Albariños and wine tourism experiences that delight thousands of visitors a year. As we already pointed out at the beginning of this article, the professionals at Pazo Baión continually recycle and incorporate new learning. And our property, as a training center, facilitates the exchange of knowledge and the creation of professional synergies.

6. From the United States to Vilanova de Arousa. A training center open to the world

DO Rías Baixas has promoted the export of Albariños in recent decades, taking them to all corners of the world. From the United States to Japan. At the same time, the Rías Baixas has become an internationally known tourist destination thanks to wine, gastronomy and natural paradises such as the Cíes Islands or the Arousa estuary.

Pazo Baión, as a winery and wine tourism space, combines both issues. Hence, as a practical training center, we can attract viticulture and tourism professionals from various countries around the world, such as the United States or the United Kingdom.

Discovering how they work in other countries, finding common ground and benefiting from the diversity of experiences that people from abroad bring with them is a true dream.

We are proud to be a historical corner of Galicia open to the world, willing to receive visitors from countless places and share with them who we are and what we do. An ideal training center for learning practical knowledge about viticulture, enology, gastronomy or quality tourism. A project that is committed to education and the dissemination of wisdom. Hundreds of students and professionals have come to learn with us and teach us over the years. I hope they continue to do so because, as Gustave Flaubert said, “life must be an incessant education.”