The 5-star Hotel Marqués de Riscal is probably the last thing you’d expect to see in Spain’s Rioja wine region.
Our first visit was in September 2021, and our second visit in December 2022. The report below starts with our visit in 2021, and continues with a quick update from our visit in December 2022.
Where is Elciego?
Elciego is a small town in the Rioja wine region in the very southern part of the Basque Country. The area actually produces what is called Rioja Alavesa, as opposed to Rioja Alta and Rioja Baja (now called Rioja Oriental). The Rioja Alavesa is known to age well, thanks to a must with a marked acidity and powerful tannic structure.
It’s important to note that there is a difference between La Rioja as a Spanish province and autonomous community and Rioja as a wine region with a denominación de origen calificada (DOCa), the highest category in Spanish wine regulations.
In fact Rioja wine is made from grapes grown in three different autonomous communities, La Rioja, Navarre, and the Basque province of Álava.
So Elciego produces Rioja wine, but is located in the Basque province of Álava, and not the autonomous community of La Rioja. The distinction between La Rioja province and the Rioja wine region is not easy to understand. For example, the part of Rioja Baja north of Ebro River is in the autonomous community of Navarre, whereas the part of Rioja Alta that encroaches north of the Ebro actually is still part of the autonomous community of La Rioja. But the entire area of Rioja Alavesa is in the Basque Country.
Elciego is a village of about 1,000 people, but it’s home to seven different bodegas (wine producers), i.e. Luberri Monje-Amestoy, Bodegas Murua, Bodegas Muriel, Bodegas Aladro, Bodega Pago de Larrea, Bodegas Fos, and of course the Marqués de Riscal.
Ciudad del Vino
Created in 2006 the ‘City of Wine’ is a complex that includes both early and modern cellars, along with the vineyards. And it also includes a leisure complex called the Hotel Marqués de Riscal. The hotel itself is an emblematic building designed by architect Frank Gehry and inaugurated in 2006 by King Juan Carlos I.
Here we can see the entire site of the hotel and winery. The entrance to the site is on the left, where only guests at the hotel can enter with their cars. Just under the word “Hotel” is the reception building for the guided tours, and the shop. Just above the word “Marqués” there is the “El Palomar” winery built in 1883 (this was the main building for our visit). The other buildings house the main winery, with ageing, bottling, storage, shipping, etc.
For example, we saw their Próximo wine which is designed as a “sin crianza” medium intensity young Rioja with a more light ripe-fruity taste (93% Tempranillo). Oddly, Próximo does not appear on the Marqués de Riscal website.
And we also saw pallets of the Champagne Laurent-Perrier being unloaded, because the Marqués de Riscal is the distributor in Spain.
Arriving in the hotel
Unfortunately in September 2021 the car navigation system took us to what was probably the old entrance to the winery, and the local signposts were not that useful, but Elciego is a small village, so it did not take long to find the real entrance. On top of that you can see the hotel from some distance away, so you can’t really get lost.
You can drive up to the hotel entrance, and the porter will take you bags, park you car, and give you your keys back.
The reception and check-in
Check-in was efficient, and the porter did his job, but he did not introduce our room, i.e. explain the TV, Internet access, A/C, etc.
Our room
One of the first things to decide is what type of room to book. There are really just three options, a room inside the main hotel building or a room in what they call the Spa building. There are two types of rooms in the Spa building, either with a view over the vineyards, or as they define it, with a view over the village.
Below we can see the Spa building, and the rooms with the view over the village.
And have a look at those 961 photovoltaic modules on the roof generating 312.3 kWp (representing up to 30% of the hotels energy consumption).
The reality is that rooms with a view over the village also have a view towards the Gehry building.
We booked a Premium Spa Room, which was about 40 square meters, and had a balcony with views over the medieval town, backed by the Sierra de Cantabria mountain range, and to the left the Gehry façade.
The room had all the usual services of a typical 5-star hotel, e.g. 55″ flatscreen TV, minibar, complimentary water, daily housekeeping service, a nightly turndown service, a good sized in-room safe, and tea and Nespresso coffee making facilities.
Guests also enjoy free access to the Spa and a complimentary scheduled guided tour of the Marqués de Riscal winery.
There was a spacious bathroom with Italian marble, and a bath and separate walk-in shower. The amenities include plush bathrobes and slippers, a makeup and shaving mirror, a salon-style hairdryer, and Caudalie products.
A very positive point was that, presumably because of COVID, the throw over the bed, and the decorative cushions had been removed.
The Gehry building
Below we have the view of the Gehry building from our terrace.
Room service
We decided to take room service for our evening meals, and mixed and matched with starters such as croquettes with Spanish ham and chicken, and Spanish omelette with onion. Main courses were battered hake with peppers and an aged beef burger, alegría riojana sauce (hot pepper), pickled, cured lard and cheese. In my opinion it was fantastic.
Desserts were fruit salad and red berry ice-cream, chocolate cake with walnuts and heather ice-cream, and (my favourite) homemade crème caramel.
Drinks included a local Spanish beer and a glass of Rosé Cava for my wife.
Breakfast
Due to COVID breakfast was served at the table, but included fresh orange juice, fruit salad, cold meats and cheeses, and a selection of pastries, breads, etc. with jams. So an excellent continental style breakfast, to which was added a chef special based upon eggs, which changed every day.
The breakfast was served on an enclosed terrace on the 2nd floor of the main building. Which started to give us an idea of the internal structure of the Gehry building.
The Spa
The spa consisted of a large pool, a hammam, a sauna, an external terrace, and a series of treatment and massage rooms. It was quite a substantial space, and very well equipped, however, as with many sauna’s in Spanish hotels the temperature was too low.
The hammam was a bit better, but still not quite set at a challenging temperature.
Our visit in December 2022
For our second visit we booked a so-called Deluxe Spa Room, with vineyard views, but we were upgraded at no additional cost to a Premium Spa Room with a view of the Elciego village (the same room that we had on our previous visit). The rooms with vineyard views may be a touch bigger, but they don’t have the terrace, which is a real asset in the summer.
Here are our additional comments from this second visit.
This time our car navigation system took us directly to the real main entrance to the site (we had updated the in-car navigation map for Spain).
The porter took our bags and parked the car, but this time he kept the car key. The porter showed us our room, but he also rapidly pointed out the TV and central heating controls, but did not mention Internet access. The porter also mentioned that just before Christmas the hotel was quiet, but would be ⅔ full over the Christmas and New Year weekends. In fact we could see that the covered parking was almost empty.
This hotel was the 4th on our road-trip south through France and Spain, and I must admit the Premium Spa Room compared very favourably with the first three hotel rooms (see my report on Loisium Wine & Spa Hôtel Champagne, Relais de Chambord, and Hôtel Chais Monnet & Spa, Cognac).
The room had the usual features, e.g. large flatscreen TV, minibar, complimentary water, a good sized in-room safe, tea and Nespresso coffee making facilities, etc. But having sampled three hotel rooms in France before arriving here I was acutely aware that the room in the Hotel Marqués de Riscal was both very comfortable and very welcoming after a day in the car.
This time I was truly impressed with the size of the room, the large bed, the comfortable sitting area, the large windows opening on the good sized terrace (too cold to be used in December). And the view from the terrace over the main hotel building with the village in the background was still very compelling.
Perhaps the most impressive feature is the very large bathroom, which includes a bath, large separate walk-in shower, a separate space for the WC and bidet, and double washbasins.
Post-COVID cushions and a bed throw had reappeared in the hotel room, and whilst I don’t like bed throws the soft furnishings did add a bit more colour to the room and gave it a touch of extra luxury.
We again took room service, selecting from what appeared to be a more extensive menu (now again presented as a paper menu in the room). Starter options were croquetas/croquettes (€14), tortilla de patata/Spanish omelette (€18), paleta Ibérica/Iberian ham (€26), club sandwich (€18), and ensalada de tomate asido/roasted tomato salad (€13).
Then there was fresh pasta (€16), salmon poke (€22), soap de pescado/fish soup (€19), and escalopes de merluza/fried hake (€18). The meat dishes were hamburguesa de vaca vieja/dry-aged beef burger (€20) or solomillo de ternera trinchado/chopped beef sirloin (€28).
Postres (dessert) was pastel de requesón/cheesecake (€11), torrija de brioche en cocotte (€11), tarta de chocolate con nueces/chocolate cake with walnuts (€9), fruit salad with red fruit sorbet (€9), or a surtido de quesos/local cheeses (€10).
I stayed with the beef burger and the local cheese selection, whilst my wife took the fresh pasta and the fruit salad. Our preferred drink was Estrella beer, but we also drank the complementary ½ bottle of the local house wine.
I enjoyed the burger (its was as good as last time), but as last time the potatoes were nothing to write home about. I throughly enjoyed the Spanish cheese selection, and it compared vary favourably with the cheese selection I had taken in the previous hotels on this trip.
My wife’s pasta was well prepared and tasted good, but I think it was a mistake to offer pappardelle. When the long ribbons are prepared with a robust ragù and a good dose of parmigiano, they stick to the fork, but with a light liquid sauce they were almost impossible to eat cleanly. Pappardelle is not a good pasta for a room service meal. However, my wife enjoyed the very complete fruit salad. The bread roll was disappointing.
As during our last visit there was free access to the Spa, but as with our last visit the sauna was only set at 70°C (far too low), and whilst the hammam was a bit better, it was still not quite hot enough.
Conclusion on our two stays in the hotel
On our first stay I concluded that the Hotel Marqués de Riscal was a good example of a 5-star hotel, if anything our second stay reinforced this conclusion. The room was excellent, the room service meals were competitively priced, and the room included breakfast, parking, complementary access to the spa, and a complementary visit to the winery.
On our first visit I thought that a few more interesting alternatives on the room service menu would have been an improvement. And on our second visit I found a a more extensive room service menu with some new and more attractive options (even if I did select again the excellent hamburguesa de vaca vieja/dry-aged beef burger).
In our first visit I was not sure if the complementary visit to the winery was not a cut-down version of a tourist visit. I would have like to see more of the site and both the historical and modern-day wine making processes. Unfortunately we did not repeat the visit during our second stay in the hotel.
At the time of our first visit I tended to agree with some reviewers who noted that staff were professional and helpful, but not particular friendly. Some reviewers suggested that this might be related to the fact that the hotel was really not part of the Marqués des Riscal winery, i.e. it was completely outsourced to The Luxury Collection of Marriott International, the company that franchises and manages properties. I must admit that on our second visit all the hotel staff were both very professional and very friendly, possibly because they knew we were returning guests.
Also during our first visit I noted that the two ladies in the breakfast room were an exception, being both very friendly and enjoyable to chat to. On our second visit, they were no longer an exception, but they remained the most friendly and welcoming pair I have seen in many, many hotels.
After our first visit we asked ourselves, would we return again? We were positive, but we did not think we would make an excessive detour to do so. After our second trip, we have now concluded that we would make a specific detour to stay again in the Hotel Marqués des Riscal.
