Villabuena de Álava/Eskuernaga

The first thing you notice is the ratio. Villabuena de Álava has 300 inhabitants and 43 wineries—more places to taste Rioja than to buy a pint of milk. The second thing is the hush: no souvenir stalls, no clack of rolling suitcases, just the faint smell of must drifting from cellar grilles and the Cantabrian ridge glowering over the vines like a bodyguard.

A village scaled to the glass, not the coach

The cobbled core fits inside a five-minute oval. Stone mansions shoulder together, their wooden balconies dark with age and their lintels carved with 17th-century coats of arms. Traffic is a tractor and, on Saturdays, one white van selling bread from the boot. You will not get lost; you will not get run over. What you might get is locked out—most bodegas open only if you email the day before. Bodegas Badiola answers in English and pours three vintages for twelve euros on Thursday-to-Sunday mornings. Turn up unannounced and you’ll stare at a roller shutter wondering why the village feels deserted.

Hotel Viura is the architectural jolt: a stack of glass cubes rammed against the church tower like a spaceship that mis-read the landing coordinates. Even non-guests can drift into the ground-floor bar for a cortado and a gawp. Order a glass of “joven” Rioja if heavy oak isn’t your thing; staff will happily swap it for a fruitier “crianza” if you change your mind. The underground car park is built for a SEAT, not a Range Rover—leave the hire car on the street and save the wing mirrors.

Vines at shin level, sierra at eye level

Walk south past the last house and the tarmac turns to farm track. The vineyards start immediately—no fences, no interpretation boards, just Tempranillo rows at waist height and the Sierra de Cantabria rising 1,200 m to the north. In April the buds are neon green; by late October the leaves smell of black tea and the pickers’ white trailers line the lanes. There are no way-marked footpaths, only the dirt roads the tractors use. After rain the clay clags to your shoes like wet biscuit; in July the shade is whatever your hat provides. A thirty-minute stroll clockwise brings you full circle with the ridge reflected in a concrete irrigation tank—perfectly still, perfectly silent.

Cyclists can string together a lazy 25 km loop south to Elciego (add ten minutes for a photo of Frank Gehry’s titanium wave sprouting from Marqués de Riscal’s hotel) and back via Laguardia’s medieval walls. The gradients are gentle but the surface varies: expect potholes, loose chippings and the occasional grape-laden lorry taking the racing line.

Lunch at two, siesta at four, stars at midnight

Spanish clock rules apply. The single restaurant kitchen fires its last order at 3 pm; arrive at 3.05 and you’ll be offered crisps and a beer while the chef wipes down the grill. Bistró Barrica inside Hotel Viura keeps Anglo-friendly hours and will serve lamb chops at four if you ask nicely. For something fancier, drive eight minutes to Páganos where Hector Oribe runs a vegetarian tasting menu—book by email, pay €55, remember you are still in farming country so “vegetarian” may arrive with a poached egg on top.

Evenings tail off quickly. The village’s only bar shuts when the last regular finishes his domino match, usually around eleven. After that the sky belongs to you and whoever remembered to bring a jacket—night temperatures drop to 14 °C even in August, a reminder that you are 550 m above sea level. Bring a torch; street lighting is considerate rather than comprehensive.

When to come, and when to stay away

Spring (mid-April to mid-June) gives you luminous mornings, wild poppies between the rows and the faint worry that you should have booked a vineyard B&B months ago. Autumn colour peaks in the third week of October, coinciding with harvest traffic and the smell of crushed grapes in the press house drains. Both seasons sell out weekend rooms at Hotel Viura; mid-week you can often snag the attic suite with a free-standing bath looking straight onto the church stonework.

July and August are hot, still and, by midday, empty. The Spanish are sensibly inside; visitors trudging the lanes at two in the afternoon learn what “no shade” really means. If high summer is unavoidable, schedule vineyard walks for 8 am, retreat to a darkened bodega by eleven, re-emerge after five when the shadows lengthen and the swifts start screaming overhead.

Winter is quiet enough to hear your own footsteps echo off the stone. Snow on the sierra is photogenic but cellars close early and some restaurants shut altogether from January to March. A day trip still works—Bilbao airport is 75 minutes away and the Guggenheim’s parking garage is heated—but pack boots with grip; icy vineyard tracks are not the place for fashion trainers.

Getting here without the tears

Bilbao is the simplest gateway: EasyJet and Vueling cover Gatwick, Manchester and Bristol; hire cars live directly outside arrivals. Head south on the AP-68, swing onto the A-124 at Logroño and you’re in Villabuena before the CD changer gets to the second track. Public transport does not exist; a taxi from Bilbao costs €120 and the driver will assume you’ve missed the last bus unless your Spanish convinces him otherwise.

Petrol stations thin out after Vitoria; fill up at Laguardia, five minutes north. Sunday is total shutdown—no shops, no ATMs, no sympathy—so buy water, paracetamol and breakfast pastries on Saturday night or you’ll be driving to the motorway services in your pyjamas.

The honest verdict

Villabuena will not keep you busy for a week. It will, however, let you taste Rioja where the grapes were grown, sleep in a building that argues with the 16th century, and walk vineyard tracks without a tour guide quoting tannin figures. Come for two nights, book two cellars, bring a phrasebook and a sense of temporal drift. Leave before you run out of clean clothes and the church bell becomes your alarm clock.