BASQUE COUNTRY Old World charms of Spanish wineries blend flawlessly with ultramodern architecture

BASQUE COUNTRY Old World charms of Spanish wineries blend flawlessly with ultramodern architecture

April 1, 2009
BY LORI RACKL
BASQUE COUNTRY, Spain -- Imagine driving through Rioja's rolling wine country, past medieval hill towns, quaint homes with clusters of red peppers hanging off window sills and endless rows of vines sprouting from the same soil that's grown wine grapes since the Roman Empire.
And then, out of nowhere, you see it: giant metallic ribbons of colored titanium, a curvaceous behemoth sitting there like a lost spaceship.
With the medieval town of Laguardia in the background, Frank Gehry?s futuristic Marques de Riscal Hotel shines brightly. A woman (inset) pours tasting samples of the wine in the old caves of El Fabulista, a winery built underground in the medieval town of Laguardia. (Llori Rackl/Sun-Times)
At first, it's as jarring as a big-screen TV in the Sistine Chapel or a satellite dish perched on Big Ben. But after a little time -- and perhaps a little wine -- you start to see how this far-out building resembles a twisted grapevine and how beautiful it looks when the afternoon sun kisses its shiny surface.
The Frank Gehry-designed Marques de Riscal Hotel is avant-garde architecture in the middle of an ancient area. It's where very old overlaps with very new -- the perfect symbol for what's happening in this illustrious part of Spain's wine country.
The Rioja appellation is divided into three regions. One of them -- Rioja Alavesa -- is in northeastern Spain, at the bottom of Basque Country. Wine has been produced here for centuries, but it's only recently that Gehry, Santiago Calatrava and other "starchitects" have come on the scene, blending futuristic facilities with an area steeped in tradition.
In this part of Rioja, you can sample wines made in medieval caves with grapes still crushed by human feet. In the same day, you can visit ultramodern wineries, or bodegas, that use the latest technology and were created by some of the biggest names in architecture.
Calatrava, the Spanish architect behind Chicago's troubled Spire project and the Milwaukee Art Museum's expansion, has only one winery in his portfolio: Ysios, on the outskirts of the charming medieval town of Laguardia.
Ysios looks like an undulating row of wine barrels at the base of the Cantabrian Mountains, which help protect the tempranillo and other grapes from northern Spain's harsh winds.
Like many of the area's wineries, Ysios offers tourist-friendly tastings and tours -- a rarity among Basque Country bodegas only a decade ago.
My hourlong tour at Ysios was in English. The bathroom doors, however, were not. I learned the hard way (and at the expense of an octogenarian emptying his bladder) that "C" stands for caballeros, or men.
In the nearby town of Samaniego is another example of an Architecture Digest-worthy winery, this one built into the vine-covered hillside. Basque architect Inaki Aspiazu's Baigorri bodega looks like a big, empty glass box from the road. But that's really just the top of a several-story underground structure built so that gravity, not mechanical pumping, can be used in every step of the winemaking process.
Baigorri's loftlike concrete and steel interior couldn't be more different than the dark, candlelit caves of El Fabulista, a winery built beneath a 17th century mansion in the center of the walled village of Laguardia.
More than 300 wineries -- only two of which still make wine -- lurk below Laguardia's medieval streets. It's no coincidence that the streets aren't strong enough to support cars, so Laguardia is a pedestrian's paradise as well as an ideal base to explore Rioja Alavesa.
The winemaking is decidedly old school at El Fabulista; workers crush grapes with their feet. You can see the deep pit, sample the wine and climb below ground to wander through the caves during the hourlong tour.
One of the oldest wineries in all of Spain is just one town over, in Elciego. Marques de Riscal produced its first bottle of wine here in 1862. A few leftovers from that vintage still lurk in the dusty cellar.
When Marques de Riscal executives first approached Gehry about designing a hotel for the property, the North American architect reportedly wasn't interested. He had bigger projects to tackle.
Hoping to change his mind, they invited Gehry to the vineyard for a visit. As the story goes, they went down into the cobweb-covered cellar and broke out a bottle of wine from 1929, the year Gehry was born.
It must have been good stuff. The 43-room, cutting-edge hotel opened in 2006 on the same grounds as Marques de Riscal's 1858 wine cellar.
Sometimes it takes a taste of history to whet your appetite for the future.

Origin information: Chicago Sun-Times