Search “Bodegas Ysios” and nearly every result files the winery under one heading: La Rioja. That name is not wrong, but it skips the detail that actually matters if you are planning to see the building in person. Bodegas Ysios sits on Camino de la Hoya outside the town of Laguardia, in the province of Álava, part of the Basque Autonomous Community. It is not inside the autonomous community of La Rioja. Denominación de Origen Calificada Rioja is a wine appellation that spans three separate regions of northern Spain, and Ysios stands on the Basque side of that line.
That distinction is not academic. DOCa Rioja splits into three legally defined subzones: Rioja Alta and Rioja Oriental, both inside the autonomous community of La Rioja, and Rioja Alavesa, which sits entirely inside Álava. Roughly a fifth of the appellation’s planted vineyard land, including the ground Ysios stands on, belongs to the Basque Country, with a smaller share again sitting across the border in Navarra, a handful of towns whose vineyards are legally Rioja despite growing inside Navarra’s own borders. Plan a trip around “La Rioja” as a single destination and the road signs will point you toward Logroño, over an hour from Laguardia and the wineries of Rioja Alavesa, because administratively they are a different region entirely. For anyone extending a trip north from Pamplona toward Basque wine country, that is the difference between the right road and a long detour.
This account draws on the Consejo Regulador DOCa Rioja’s own subzone records, Santiago Calatrava’s own project archive, and Pernod Ricard’s 2025 sale documentation covering the winery’s current ownership, cross-checked against the sourced entry on the Rioja DOCa appellation.
Rioja Alavesa Is Basque Country, Not the Autonomous Community of La Rioja
DOCa Rioja is Spain’s oldest Denominación de Origen Calificada, the country’s highest wine classification, awarded to the region in 1991. The name refers to the appellation, not to a single province or autonomous community. The Consejo Regulador, the body that governs the designation, divides it into three subzones: Rioja Alta and Rioja Oriental, which together make up the bulk of the autonomous community of La Rioja, and Rioja Alavesa, which occupies the northern bank of the Ebro river inside Álava, one of the three provinces of the Basque Autonomous Community.
Rioja Alavesa is the smallest of the three subzones by planted area, roughly 13,000 hectares, protected from Atlantic weather by the Sierra de Cantabria mountains to its north. That shelter, combined with its position on the cooler side of the Ebro, gives Rioja Alavesa a shorter growing season than Rioja Oriental and produces wines with higher natural acidity. Tempranillo dominates the plantings, as it does across all of DOCa Rioja, but Rioja Alavesa growers have traditionally worked lower-density vineyards with wider spacing between vines, a response to thinner, poorer soils than the river-adjacent plots further south.
Laguardia functions as the commercial and cultural center of Rioja Alavesa, a walled medieval hill town surrounded by vineyards and, since 2001, by architectural landmarks built to put the subzone on the map in its own right. Bodegas Ysios is the best known of them, though a few kilometers away in Elciego, Frank Gehry’s Hotel Marqués de Riscal makes the same argument even more forcefully, and researchers have since measured how much it actually reshaped the local economy. The practical upshot for a visitor is straightforward: type “Rioja” into a map application without specifying a town and it will not reliably land you in Basque Country. Laguardia and Ysios sit closer to Vitoria-Gasteiz, the Basque capital, than to Logroño, the city most associated with the Rioja name.
What Santiago Calatrava Actually Built
The Bodegas y Bebidas Group, a Spanish wine conglomerate, commissioned Santiago Calatrava to design a winery that would serve as a landmark for its new Rioja Alavesa label. Construction ran from 1998 to 2001, when the building was inaugurated.
The design centers on two concrete, load-bearing walls, each 196 meters long and set 26 meters apart, tracing a sinusoidal, wave-like shape in both plan and elevation. The southern facade is clad in horizontal cedar slats that, reflected in adjoining pools tiled with broken white ceramic, are meant to echo a row of stacked wine barrels. Above the walls, a roof of laminated wood beams follows the same undulating line, wrapped in aluminum paneling that catches and shifts the light across the day. The north facade is precast concrete with narrow openings, while the east and west facades are clad in fretted aluminum plate. At the building’s center, the roof extends outward to shelter a visitor center balcony overlooking the winery and vineyards below, and a granite bridge crosses the reflecting pools to reach the vines themselves.
The site itself shaped the design. Grade changes of up to 10 meters separate the property’s highest point, to the north, from its lowest, to the south, with roughly half the plot given over to vineyard. Calatrava’s office has described the intent as continuity between the volumetric treatment of the roof and walls and the landscape surrounding them, so that the building reads as an extension of the terrain rather than an object placed on top of it.
From Bodegas y Bebidas to Vinarchy: Who Owns Ysios Now
Ysios has changed hands more than once since its 2001 opening. Bodegas y Bebidas Group’s wine holdings became part of Allied Domecq, and when Pernod Ricard acquired Allied Domecq’s wine and spirits business in 2005, Ysios came with it, spending the next two decades under Pernod Ricard ownership alongside other Spanish labels including Campo Viejo and Azpilicueta.
That changed on April 30, 2025, when Pernod Ricard completed the sale of its international strategic wine portfolio, Ysios included, to Australian Wine Holdco Limited, the investment consortium behind Accolade Wines. The combined business took the name Vinarchy. Vinarchy is backed by a group of institutional investors including Bain Capital, Sona Asset Management, Samuel Terry Asset Management, Intermediate Capital Group, and Capital Four, and now controls a portfolio that spans Jacob’s Creek and St Hugo in Australia alongside Ysios, Campo Viejo, Tarsus, and Azpilicueta in Spain.
The winery’s name predates all of this corporate history. Ysios is a tribute to Isis and Osiris, the Egyptian deities associated with agriculture, fertility, and rebirth, chosen as a nod to the winery’s stated philosophy of renewal and respect for the land it farms. The winery has built its identity around a narrower focus than most large-scale Rioja producers, including neighboring Navarra houses like Bodegas Julián Chivite, which built its own reputation over centuries rather than around a single architectural statement, and Haro’s own Bodegas Muga, which stakes its identity on a working in-house cooperage instead. Ysios itself makes exclusively Reserva-classification wines and a small number of exclusive coupages, sourced from old vines across more than 120 hectares of estate vineyard, with fruit destemmed by hand rather than by machine.
Under DOCa Rioja’s own regulation, a red wine cannot legally carry the Reserva designation unless it spends a minimum of 36 months between oak barrel and bottle, with at least 12 of those months in oak. Committing an entire winery to that single, slower classification, rather than spreading production across younger Crianza wines released sooner, is itself a statement about what Ysios is trying to be inside an appellation known for producing wine at every speed.
Visiting Bodegas Ysios From Pamplona
Laguardia sits roughly 102 kilometers from Pamplona, about an hour and nine minutes by car on a route that typically runs through Logroño or Vitoria-Gasteiz. That makes Bodegas Ysios a realistic single-day extension for anyone already in Navarra with a car and an afternoon to spend, rather than a trip that requires its own separate base.
Tours run through the winery’s own visits program rather than casual walk-in access, with prices starting around 50 euros per person and tastings conducted in Spanish or English for groups of up to 25. Advance booking is required, since opening days and available time slots shift through the year. The visit typically includes the production areas inside Calatrava’s building, a tasting of the estate’s Reserva-only range, which spans a base Reserva, the higher-tier Los Prados bottling, the ultra-selective Grano a Grano coupage, and a barrel-fermented Blanco, and, depending on the season, a walk across the granite bridge into the vineyard itself.
For a traveler weighing whether the detour is worth it, the honest answer depends on what draws them: photographers and architecture visitors tend to rate the building itself as the destination, while wine-focused visitors should know that Ysios pours a narrower, more expensive range than most Rioja Alavesa neighbors, reflecting its Reserva-only approach rather than offering an entry-level young red to sample alongside it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Bodegas Ysios in La Rioja?
Not in the sense of the autonomous community. Bodegas Ysios sits in Rioja Alavesa, a subzone of the DOCa Rioja wine appellation that lies entirely inside Álava province, part of the Basque Autonomous Community. The wine carries the Rioja name because DOCa Rioja is a legal wine appellation spanning three regions, not because the winery sits in the region called La Rioja.
Who designed Bodegas Ysios?
Santiago Calatrava designed Bodegas Ysios for the Bodegas y Bebidas Group, with construction running from 1998 to 2001. The building is known for its two 196-meter sinusoidal concrete walls, cedar-clad southern facade, and undulating aluminum roof.
How far is Bodegas Ysios from Pamplona?
Laguardia, where Bodegas Ysios is located, sits about 102 kilometers from Pamplona, roughly an hour and nine minutes by car, typically routed through Logroño or Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Who owns Bodegas Ysios now?
Vinarchy, formed in April 2025 when Pernod Ricard sold its international strategic wine portfolio to Australian Wine Holdco Limited, the consortium behind Accolade Wines. Ysios had previously belonged to Pernod Ricard since 2005, and to Bodegas y Bebidas Group and Allied Domecq before that.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.