Hotel Echaurren

The story of Echaurren begins in 1898, when Pedro Echaurren and Andrea García remodelled their old coaching inn in Ezcaray. The arrival of the railway in the valley encouraged them to open a dining room serving home cooking, and that dining room became the seed of a hospitality tradition now five generations long. The old stables and carriage houses were eventually turned into the restaurant's dining room. In the fourth generation, Marisa Sánchez and Félix Paniego gave the house a decisive push: in 1987 they received the National Gastronomy Award, and Marisa became the first woman to win it. Their youngest son, Francis Paniego, born in Ezcaray in 1968, opened El Portal de Echaurren, which earned its first Michelin star in 2004 and its second in 2014, both firsts for La Rioja. His brother José Félix, who runs the dining room and the wine cellar, received the National Gastronomy Award for Best Maître in 2019. Today the house is run by the three Paniego siblings (Marisa, José Félix and Francis) and is a member of Relais & Châteaux.

The building is a traditional house in the centre of Ezcaray that has grown along with the family, and the stone columns of the entrance portico and the structure of the balcony still survive from its coaching-inn days. The latest major renovation, by architects Rubén Picado and María José de Blas, offers a contemporary reading of that history: noble materials, carefully chosen fabrics and open spaces facing the square and its fortress-church. The rooms favour a warm minimalism in beech wood and white; the back of the headboard doubles as a desk and the glass-walled bathrooms are built into the room itself. Suites add a large bathtub and a double shower. The details speak of the territory: the mohair blankets come from a family workshop in the village and the toiletries from an organic brand in Haro. Breakfast is served on a glassed-in terrace overlooking San Lorenzo peak.

Ezcaray is a mountain town in the upper Oja valley, at the foot of the Sierra de la Demanda, with arcaded streets, coat-of-arms mansions and a long textile tradition that lives on in its blanket workshops. The hotel stands in the heart of town, opposite the church of Santa María la Mayor. Above it rises San Lorenzo peak, at 2,271 metres the highest point in La Rioja, and in winter the Valdezcaray ski resort is just a few kilometres away. The surrounding beech forests are ideal for hiking, mountain biking and, in autumn, mushroom foraging. To the north, Santo Domingo de la Calzada marks the passage of the Camino de Santiago, and the monasteries of Suso and Yuso in San Millán de la Cogolla, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are a short drive away. Haro and the vineyards of Rioja Alta round off the trip with visits to century-old wineries.