The wine press of 1611 was the old inn of Igartza. Isabel de Lobiano, Lady of Igartza, ordered the construction of the old inn.

• The reason: To build a typical roadside inn of the period.
• Before the inn, the palace wine press stood on the same site: It was known as “The Igartza Wine Press Outbuilding”.
  • The Igartza press was used to process the production of Igartza’s entailed estate and the local farms. The wine press is still in its original location (in the hotel cafeteria).

CIDER: In the Basque Country, in the valleys of the Cantabrian Mountains, the climate is ideal for apple trees (the vineyards find a more suitable climate on the Mediterranean side of the mountains, in the Rioja Alavesa and the Ribera de Navarra areas).

The operation: The fruit is crushed in the wooden bucket and then pressed using the three screws, and the juice falls into the barrel on the lower floor. The first cider is drunk towards the end of January.

The building:

• Some of its windows and arches were boarded up, since the family that lived there had adapted it according to their needs. The large doors gave access to the stables, and the smaller ones to the house.
• The upper floor of the wine press is built with bricks (the bricks were usually made by artisans from Labourd, and that was the case here).
• The last annex is recent, with the addition of rooms and a restaurant considered necessary for the project to be viable.
• It is one of the oldest roadside inns in the Basque Country.