Wine Therapy at Gehry's Hotel Marques de Riscal, Elciego

Sometimes an inconvenience turns out to be a blessing in disguise. When we arrived at Hotel Marques de Riscal, we were told that the guests occupying our room were late checking out. At that point, 'our room' was Rm 16. Because of their tardiness, we were given Rm 1 (effectively moving us from the Spa Wing to the Gehry Wing) and 2 complimentary glasses of wine. Brilliant.

Rm 1 did not disappoint. The view was fabulous, and I would hazard to guess, one of the better ones the hotel affords. We had a smooch to celebrate our good fortune but almost jumped out of our skin when we realised we were not alone! A man's head had appeared from behind the window-seat! A man in a harness. Funny thing was he looked a lot like our cleaner. 'It's Lucky' we chimed! We then proceeded - on account of feeling great warmth to this man precariously balanced on wire - to draw him smiley faces on paper, which I then pressed to the glass by way of gratitude. He was risking his life to clean our window! If he was embarrassed for unwittingly being the third party in our menage-a-trois, he was now thoroughly perplexed and made a hasty departure.

Window-cleaner gone, we settled ourselves on lofty bed and looked out over the view. It was a bizarre sensation, watching the shadows of clouds pass over the 16th century San Endres Parish Church from our £55 million titanium perch. It made me wonder what the locals really thought of these incredibly bold, brave, new world designs so close to the old, the historic... just down the road there was Viura, and Santago Calatrava's Ysios, which we could see in the distance behind the Parish Church. A paradoxical view, the theatricality of which was heightened by heavy blood red curtains that moved back and forth at a button-push.

After half an hour of moving the curtains back and forth to loud music banging out of the beside B&O, we carried on acting like kids in a sweet-shop by pressing every other button to be found. Aside from inadvertently summoning the concierge, twice, we then found a bottle of wine (which we were clearly meant to find), an extensive pillow menu and directory of sparkling mineral waters. The rather surreal poofy bedside lampshades were fun. Husband insisted I take a photo of him to make one look like his head, which I did, and here it is.

It is said that when Gehry was slow to take on the commission, the MDR execs uncorked a bottle from 1929, the year the architect was born, to help him make up his mind. Well, the bottle in our room wasn't that old a vintage but it was still mighty fine. A 2008 Crianza. We opened the wine, booked a table for two for dinner, booked a wine tour for the morning and enjoyed the view. Wine drunk we headed for the Caudalie Spa where a wine bath for two awaited, followed by massage. Bliss.

As wine temples go, I'm not sure you could get finer. But at dinner, the tasting menu was served at great haste (we had a plate count on our table as they started to pile up) and the following morning, the tour was no great success. Our group was rather large, 12 people in all, none of whom spoke Spanish. Despite this we were all led to an amphitheatre for a 15 minute video in Spanish, during which the group of Italian men descended into giggles whilst doing their best to impress 4 Dutch girls oblivious to their advances.

It later transpired that absolutely no one in our group, save husband and I, had any wine knowledge. Seems that the winery is well marketed as a box worth ticking if you happen to be in the area, regardless of whether you care for wine or not. It is a leviathan of a bodega: a little impersonal, but you can't help but be impressed.

A great deal of the tour focused on the design of the hotel itself -partly because the Italian men, having tired of the Dutch girls, had turned their attention to the sort of cliental the hotel attracts. Had Edwin Chan (Gehry's design partner on the project) been there, he would have described it thus: 'a chateau for the 21st century, a kind of bed-and-breakfast for VIPs'. Our tour guide described it as 'exclusive' before going on to explain that the silver, pale gold and pink titanium ribbons were inspired by the foil cap, gold-mesh wrapper and contents of the bottle, whilst the supporting stilts echo the vines themselves.

I prefer the way Gehry describes it: 'It's a marvellous creature, with hair flying everywhere'. Marvellous indeed. And we are all VIPs.


That's it for Rioja. From here we travelled towards Ribera del Duero, stopping at Lerma on route, which you can read about here.

Otherwise to return to the main Northern Spain menu, click here.