Horse Riding / Equestrian in April

Jerez is the center of classical Spanish horsemanship. The Real Escuela Andaluza de Arte Ecuestre is one of the four great classical dressage academies in the world, alongside Vienna, Lisbon, and Saumur. The school holds public training sessions Tuesday through Friday mornings where you can watch the haute ecole work in progress, and full performance shows on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Baroque horses and live music. Beyond the school, the wider Jerez area has breeding farms for the Andalusian and Carthusian horse breeds, and several independent schools offering dressage instruction, trail riding through the sherry vineyard country, and multi-day equestrian circuits in the rolling Cadiz landscape.

Every white stallion at Vienna's Spanish Riding School traces back to this estate. Lipica has bred Lipizzaners continuously since 1580, which makes it the oldest European stud farm still working its original ground, and UNESCO listed the whole tradition. What earns it a spot for travelers rather than just tourists is that you can actually ride here: structured lesson programs run over multiple days with mornings in the stables grooming and learning horse care, trail rides cross the oak-dotted Karst pastureland on estate horses, and the resident Classical Riding School performs the dressage repertoire the breed was made for. Watching a levade performed a hundred meters from the paddock where the horse was foaled is about as close to the source as equestrian culture gets.

Mendoza's geography gives horse riding a quality you don't find at most wine destinations: you can leave the vineyard floor and climb into genuine Andean terrain above 2,500m within a few hours, with Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas, visible on the horizon. Several estancias and specialist operators run full-day and multi-day riding circuits that move through malbec vineyard country, then climb into the foothills through poplars and irrigation canals, and eventually into the raw Andes. Argentine criollo horses are built for altitude and rocky terrain. The combination of wine culture and mountain riding is unusual and genuinely well-executed here.