My husband and I stayed at this hotel for one night in January as part of a week long trip exploring the Basque Country and La Rioja. I do not normally take the time out to write reviews of hotels but I am very difficult to please and found this hotel sublime from start to finish. The building is like something from another world and the views of Elciego are breathtaking. Our room in the Gherry building was small but ultramodern and sumptuous and the spa and library are tranquil and beautiful. The tour of the hotels bodega was interesting and the wine was delicious. The service was full of special touches like a welcome drink of essence of grape served three ways and free bottle of wine in our room and champagne for our anniversary, and the concierge who ran out to wash our car before we departed!
It is not cheap to stay at this hotel but worth every penny and I will undoubtably return many times!

II decided to go to the Marques de Riscal Hotel to celebrate my birthday and I just had a truly amazing experience.
We landed in Bilbao and our journey into modern architecture started at the CALATRAVA’s Airport Terminal, a real beauty!
The hotel is located in a splendid area of Spain (la Rioja), inside a winery and surrounded by vineyards.
Designed by Frank O. Gehry, the building just amazing: on top of a hill it looks like a 21st Century Chateu, perfectly integrated with the old buildings of the winery and the old Cathedral of ELCIEGO just close-by.
We were upgraded to an Executive Suite and we enjoyed a 70SMQ room full of design furniture (B&B, Artemide, Bang&Olufsenn etc.) together with a bottle of wine as a welcome gift. The bathroom was amazing!
We ate twice at the one star Michelin restaurant inside the hotel where we were served the tasting menu: a real incredible journey into modern cuisine.
The SPA is magnificent and I strongly recommend the scrub treatment with merlot-grape seeds
A special mention to the personnel of the hotel: nice, always smiling, always there to help, but never invasive.
This has been for sure one of the best Birthday celebration I ever had and I am very much looking forward to come back as soon as possible.

We went to the Hotel Marques de Riscal for a weekend, to celebrate my partner's birthday. I was a bit dubious: flying to Bilbao and driving to the middle of wine country seemed too much trouble even for a long weekend. I am very glad my partner insisted, because this turned out to be an idyllic weekend break.
The hotel is architecturally stunning. One of my favourite pastimes during the weekend was to keep looking at the main building as the light of the day changed, to appreciate the subtle differences. The rooms was spacious, and I appreciated the design touches in furniture which fit perfectly with the architecture.
Service was full of small attentions, without being overbearing. We relied on hotel personnel to plan a couple of day trips in the area, and were not disappointed with their suggestion.
We ended up having dinner both nights at the hotel restaurant, because the food was just too good to pass (special mention for the appetizer "seed tiles": I am still reeling with how light and delicious these were).
We ended up using SPG points, so admittedly I cannot talk about the value for money for full-paying customers, but from our point of view this has certainly been one of our favourite destinations - and a place we're sure to go back to!

We stayed four nights here on a recent trip to Spain. I only picked it because it was in the Starwood group and we needed somewhere to break our trip, but am I so glad I did!

The building is truly amazing and stands out in what otherwise seemed to be a sleepy village in winter (I'd guess it is much busier during the year). The first security guard was a bit gruff but other than that, all the staff were wonderful, and incredibly friendly and service oriented. They made our 13 yo daughter feel welcome with a kids' welcome pack and the room service menu has a "kids' platter" with a range of food (cooked meat, ham, salad, croquettes, chocolate cake) for EUR37. The room was spacious and easily fit an additional rollaway. The main bed was very large and comfortable. The bathroom was huge and the shower was one of those overhead ones that dumps water on you like a waterfall, which feels way too decadent coming from Australia! The room was cleaned every day and it was spic and span.

We didn't use the spa but it looked pretty good. We used the gym and it was fine.

We ate in the restaurant or bistro each night. The food was awesome! We had two tasting menus, with five and eight courses. The courses were quite generous and pretty good value - EUR55 for the five and EUR85 for the eight (food only). We relied on the sommelier to recommend wine for my husband and he was very impressed with the selections.

There is a library upstairs in the main building where you can sit and relax, a wine bar that serves drinks and food as well as the two restaurants. While it was a bit cold for us, there was room to sit outside and enjoy the views. That said, this is a small hotel (around 40-45 rooms I think) so don't expect to be able to find loads of space around. The hotel was around 50% full while we were there and we never felt crowded, and I think it'd be similar with more people around.

We don't speak Spanish but we found most staff spoke enough English for us to be able to understand - hand gestures helped too!

We have stayed in a lot of hotels over the years including some luxury ones and the staff at the Hotel Marques de Riscal are up there with the absolute best. They made this a great break for us and I can thoroughly recommend this hotel!