Bodegas Baigorri

Wine and the City tries two delicious wines at the cutting edge Bodegas Baigorri in Rioja – Baigorri Reserva 2007, which scooped the best Rioja gong at the New Wave Spanish Wine Awards, and the signature Baigorri de Garage 2007, with Lottie West from Wines From Rioja.

Decanter World Wine Awards dinner

I'm a bit late in getting this up, but last Wednesday was our Decanter World Wine Awards dinner. I can't quite believe this is the fourth dinner I've attended - how the years have flown.

The first was at the V&A, when I was a wine newby, having worked at Decanter a mere month. I sat next to Michael Schuster and declared I preferred the Riesling to the Chardonnay we were drinking. The next day a copy of his wine tasting book landed on my desk along with a note that read: 'anyone who prefers Riesling to Chardonnay has a palate with great potential'.

We migrated to the The Hempel hotel the year after, then settled on the epically beautiful Royal Opera House, where we've been for the past two years. This year we were treated to wonderful weather - it was one of those glorious late summer evenings where the sun stayed out late, warming our shoulders while we sipped Charles Heidsieck 2000 on the terrace. I say we, but I had to steal sips from my glass, in between ushering winning winemakers to be interviewed for our shiny new decanter.com site, to ferreting out their trophy Riedel decanters.

After the madness of the reception I had a chance to unwind and savour a selection of the wines on show, my standouts being the Schloss Johannisberg, Riesling Erstes Gewächs, Rheingau 2008 and Bodegas Baigorri de Garage Rioja 2005. I was sat next to Alex Hunt, who told me of his seven year quest to become an MW - the answer to which would be revealed on Friday (he did). We then got talking about the science of sight, the merits of Comte, and whether photography could be considered an art form, which, of course, it can.

Food was an exciting affair - we started with peat-smoked salmon and watercress creme fraiche and moved on to leg of lamb roasted pink with a Guwurztraminer velouté. Both were exquisitely cooked, especially considering the ROH kitchens had to churn out 400 of each dish. After the main course the 28 International Trophies were announced. There were two big surprise wins: the Red Rhône Varietal over £10 trophy went to Israeli winery Carmel, for its Kayoumi Single Vineyard Shiraz 2008, beating the likes of Rhône big guns Chapoutier and Guigal. The winery, based in Upper Galilee, celebrated its 120th harvest this year.

Another shocker, which raised the biggest cheer of the night, was when East Sussex winery Ridge View trumped some of the top Champagne houses to scoop the Sparkling over £10 trophy for its Grosvenor Blanc de Blancs 2006. Unfortunately I was in the loo at the time, but the cheers of delight at the fact that the Brits had trumped the French at their own game snaked all the way down the corridor.

I'd spoken with Mardi from the winery a few weeks prior, in order to get their wine dog Talby on our back page, and had to force myself not to mention the International Trophy. One word from me and the whole surprise would have been ruined. Mardi rang the office the day after the awards – she'd been bombarded with media interview requests all morning, but seemed as happy about Talby making it as a 'top dog' as she did about the International Trophy.

Before pudding I quickly caught up with Jeremy Rockett from Gonzales Byass, who was sporting a fetching Tio Pepe waistcoat, Joe Gilmour from Roberson, who was buzzing after his Kensington shop was deservedly crowned the best small independent merchant in our retailer awards, and the lovely Lo Franco brothers from Fattoria La Vialla in Tuscany (who I'm pictured with). They invited me out to their estate to do the oliver harvest in October - I'm seriously tempted.

Sitting back down to get stuck into my sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce, Barry Dick pulls up a chair beside me. We get chatting and I quickly notice he's taking no interest in his pud - watching the six pack I imagine. I feel rather self conscious about wolfing down mine, but it's so delicious I can't resist. He tells me he bought his tux 15 years ago and that it still fits. I glance down at his tight fitting trousers, his toned thigh muscles clearly visible from beneath the fabric, and get a Semillons flashback!

Hotel Viura

When Frank Gehry created his purple and silver stainless steel structure for Marqués de Riscal in 2006 (said to resemble the folds in a flamenco skirt), Rioja became a byword for avant-garde architecture. From the glass-fronted, Bond-like Bodegas Baigorri designed by Basque architect Iñaki Aspiazu, to Santiago Calatrava’s undulating Bodegas Ysios, via Zaha Hadid’s futuristic triangular pavilion at López de Heredia, some of the world’s greatest architects have proved their mettle in the region.

The latest addition to Rioja’s ultramodern architectural portfolio is Hotel Viura, a 4 star luxury boutique hotel designed by Joseba and Xabier Aramburu that opened at the end of April. Set next to a 17^th century church against a backdrop of the Sierra de Cantabria mountains in the tiny medieval village of Villabuena de Alava – inhabitants 300, in Rioja Alavesa, the hotel seems to surge out of the ground, its cubed rooms nonchalantly piled on top of each other like building blocks.

Named after Rioja’s most widely planted white grape, Viura is supposed to resemble a bunch of grapes, but to me its whimsically superimposed white cubes are very favela chic. I was invited out on the inaugural press visit last week with a small group of journalists. On arrival I’m offered the house cocktail, made with red wine syrup, amaretto, vodka and soda. It’s sickly sweet and strangely satisfying.

We sip our cocktails whilst waiting for Godoy, Viura’s ebullient, young, Malaga-born sommelier fresh from a stint at the chic boutique Hillbark Hotel in Liverpool. Godoy has already put his stamp on Viura with a reversible wine list, ordered by both region and grape variety.

Before dinner we’re given a tour of the rooftop lounge bar with an outdoor cinema and impressive 360-degree views of Villabuena de Alava. It’s dusk, and the swifts are busy making figures of eight in the sky. From the rooftop we move down to the cellar, decked out with orange neon strip lights, like a Dan Flavin installation. It boasts over 200 bins, 80% of the which are from Rioja, including a sizeable offering of barrel-fermented Viuras and a number of old vintages of CVNE, Marqués de Riscal, López de Heredia, Muga and Roda.

The restaurant serves traditional Basque cuisine with a modern twist. Gold barrels hover from the ceiling in suspended animation. ‘It took a week to paint them and stick them up there’, Godoy informs me, making me fearful I might be floored by one during the starters. On my visit I try cod croquettes, crab ravioli, green pea and black truffle, cream cheese foam with red pepper and chives, suckling lamb, poached pears…

After an epic dinner (I lose count after the sixth course), I’m as stuffed as a pillow and craving sleep. My spacious suite has minimal interiors, dominated by a behemoth bed measuring two square metres – I could turn in it like a compass needle and still be nowhere near the edge.

In keeping with the wine theme, above the bed is a print of a pair of barrels. I lucked out here – one of the journalists got a terrifying, Francis Bacon-esque hadean vision of a cellar. Between the bath and the bed is a sheet of violet glass, which, when peered through from the bath, gives the room a lilac hue. Everything screams cool, from the 42-inch flatscreen TV and red Nespresso, to the black bath products. The curtains are a sober shade of gray, and frame my view out onto Villabuena de Alava via my ridiculously large roof terrace.

Does Viura jar with the village? It sticks out like a fat man on a catwalk, but its higgledy-piggledy high jinks somehow works beside the solid sandstone church. It looks absolutely mad, like an office block has fallen from the sky and landed awkwardly, but that’s the point – it’s supposed to look mad, supposed to provoke a reaction. After all, it’s a work of art as much as a hotel.

Hotel Viura, Calle Mayor, Villabuena de Alava 01307, Spain

Tel: +34 945 60 90 00, www.hotelviura.com

Doubles from €125, daily flights from Heathrow to Bilbao with Vueling