Laguardia

The morning sun hits the honey-coloured stone of Calle Mayor and the whole ridge seems to glow. From the valley road below, Laguardia looks less like a real place than a matte painting from an old film: a single wall of russet sandstone rising straight from vineyards, no modern breaks, no satellite dishes. Only the double-height door of the Puerta de San Juan gives away the century. Once you step through it, the reason for the perfection becomes clear—nobody has been allowed to mess it up. Cars are banned inside the walls, not for tourists’ delight but to stop the entire hill collapsing into the 300-plus wine cellars honeycombed beneath.

A Town that Lives Under Its Own Feet

The locals call the cellars calaos, and they are still working rooms, not museum pieces. Walk five minutes from any central doorway, knock, and someone will haul up a trapdoor to reveal a spiral of rough steps dropping twelve metres into chalk. The temperature down there holds at 12 °C year-round; spiders the size of two-pence pieces guard the barrels. El Fabulista, the easiest cave to visit without Spanish, runs English tours on the hour (€10, book at the tiny tourist office opposite the town hall). The guide keeps a torch in her apron pocket and tells you, straight-faced, that the tunnels once stretched far enough to let monks escape all the way to the river—though nobody has tested the route since 1873.

Above ground, the street plan is medieval tight. Houses lean in until their timber balconies almost touch, creating a tunnel of shade that smells of garlic and diesel from the morning delivery vans—yes, vans are allowed, but only between 07:00 and 10:00, so the cobbles still echo with handcarts and heels the rest of the day. The Plaza Mayor functions as both living room and thoroughfare; grandparents occupy the stone benches while primary-school children career around the 1677 town hall, chasing pigeons through the arches. Order a cortado at Bar El Moso and you get change from €1.50; the waiter will ask if you want the glass of water “con gas o sin” before you remember your Spanish is rusty.

Two Churches and a Sunset

Santa María de los Reyes, at the top end of the main drag, justifies the entry fee (€4) for its polychrome portal alone. The colours—oxblood, lapis, a gold that still catches the light—were restored in the 1990s and look improbably fresh for 14th-century stone. Inside, the nave is oddly plain, a deliberate counter-punch that makes the baroque high altar explode when you finally reach it. English leaflets are kept in a box by the door; put €1 in the slot or the caretaker will materialise and do it for you.

San Juan Bautista, the second church, is free and calmer. Climb its tower for the best straight-down view of the vines—rows so neat they resemble corduroy pressed into the earth. The bell still marks the quarters; stand back when it strikes or the clang will rattle your fillings.

Evening light is better from the adarve, the walkway that skirts the walls. The circuit takes twenty minutes, shoes permitting, and delivers a 270-degree sweep: south to the limestone ridge of Cantabria, north to the Ebro valley’s checkerboard of tempranillo. Photographers arrive with tripods twenty minutes before sunset; everyone else simply leans on the parapet and opens another bottle. Laguardia has no supermarket chains, so wine is bought the old way—carry an empty five-litre jug to Bodegas Carlos San Pedro and they fill it from the tap for €8. A plastic cork is complimentary.

Eating Between Harvests

Riojan cooking is built for vineyard labourers, which means portions assume you have pruned 300 vines before lunch. At Posada Mayor de Migueloa the chuletón—a single rib of milk-fed lamb—hangs over the table like a small canoe. One feeds two hungry adults; three if you order the plate of patatas a la Riojana first (soft potato, mild chorizo, paprika broth that tastes better than it photographs). Vegetarians survive on pimientos rellenos stuffed with salt-cod brandade; the kitchen will swap for goat’s cheese if you ask before 14:00, when the daily rush hits.

Pintxos are simpler here than in San Sebastián—gilda skewers of olive, anchovy and guindilla pepper cost €1.80 at Doña Blanca and come with a printed English translation that manages to misspell “anchovy” three different ways. Nobody minds; the terrace catches the last sun and the house white is poured at cellar temperature, not teeth-chilling. Sunday lunch is sacred: kitchens close at 16:00 and reopen at 20:00 sharp. Arrive at 15:55 and they will still serve, but you’ll eat under a Hoover-holding waiter who wants to get home.

Outside the Walls

The town sits at 600 m, high enough for the air to carry a snap even in May. Vineyards start at the wall’s base; walk five minutes south and you’re alone between the rows, the only sound a distant tractor radio playing 1990s Euro-pop. Two Bronze-Age dolmens—La Hechicera and El Sotillo—lie twenty minutes across the fields. They are little more than table-stone triangles shaded by holm oaks, but the 360-degree horizon makes you realise how long people have been growing things here. Pick up the free route map from the tourist office; the path can turn to sticky clay after rain, so trainers with tread are wiser than white-soled Stan Smiths.

If you prefer wheels to boots, the Vía Verde del Vasco-Navarro follows an old mining railway for 50 km south towards Treviño. Bike hire is available from Rioja Bike in the new part of town (€25 a day, helmet included); the first 8 km to Lanciego are level, passing stone viaducts and a picnic spot with spring water cold enough to chill a bottle of crianza.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

Spring brings almond blossom and the smell of cut fennel along the lanes; hotel doubles drop to €80 mid-week. Autumn is show-time: the harvest fiesta in mid-September involves grape-treading vats in the square and free glasses of juice so sweet it makes children hyper. Rooms triple and must be booked a year ahead; if you just want wine, come the following week when the crowds have gone but the cellars are still fermenting and the air smells like warm blackberry jam.

August midday is brutal—stone radiates heat back at you like a pizza oven—and parking turns into a slow-motion hunt. The free public car park at the foot of the hill fills by 11:00; after that you circle the new town’s streets where bays are 30 cm shorter than a UK hatchback and the kerbs are shin-high. Bring coins for the blue-zone machines or surrender and use the underground garage (€12/24 h).

Winter is quiet, occasionally snowy, and the bodegas keep shorter hours, but hotel fireplaces are real, not decorative, and the local rule of free tapa with every drink still applies. Monday is the dead day: even the church closes, and the only lunch available is a tostada at the petrol-station café on the circunvalación. Plan to arrive Tuesday to Friday if you want life, or Saturday if you want noise and don’t mind queueing for the loo.

Last Glass

Laguardia is small; you can walk every street in forty minutes. Its magic lies in what you can’t see from the ramparts: the tunnels, the barrels, the generations who built a town on a hill because vines would grow down the slope and enemies could be spotted twenty kilometres away. Stay long enough to drink something that started life beneath your bedroom floor, then leave before the tour buses rev their engines. The road down spins like a corkscrew—drive it slowly, or the wine you tasted will remind you all the way to Logroño.