Marqués de Riscal Hotel and Winery

In the village of Elciego, a ten-minute drive from Laguardia, the Marqués de Riscal winery is capped by a billowing canopy of titanium and stainless steel designed by Frank Gehry. The building is deliberately extravagant — ribbons of gold, silver, and pink metal twist over the nineteenth-century winery buildings like a crumpled wrapper. It houses a luxury hotel, a spa, and two restaurants, but even visitors who can't afford to stay should make the drive to see it from the outside.

The winery itself has been producing wine since 1858 and was the first in Rioja to use Bordeaux varieties and methods. Tours are available daily and take in the historic cellars as well as the contemporary architecture. The combination of storied wine history and contemporary spectacle is unlike anything else in the region.

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Frank Gehry's titanium canopy over the Marqués de Riscal hotel was commissioned as deliberate tourism shock therapy — the Rioja Alavesa wine board wanted something that would draw visitors the way Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao had transformed that city. It worked. The winery had been producing wine since 1858; Gehry's building, completed in 2006, brought it international fame for architecture rather than wine for the first time in its history.

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