Hotel Villa de Ábalos

Great food. The dessert was to die for. The hotel itself was nicely done - quite understated but comfy. It's the only place with any life in the pueblo, but it's nice and quiet. Great breakfast too.

Really enjoyed our stay in the Hotel Villa de Abalos. This is a charming, family-run hotel, with lots of character. We stayed for bed, breakfast and evening meal. The rooms were lovely, food was excellent and our hosts were friendly and helpful. It is a great location to use as a base when touring the rioja region. We would highly recommend a visit.

Great experience at this village hotel. Clean, characterful, excellent restaurant and nice welcome. We dined here each evening (and morning), and the food was excellent. In particular, one of the many dinner courses, was a mixed salad of avocado, apple, walnuts and goats cheese with a caramelised topping. It was simply fantastic. The second delight was breakfast. Served as several courses, it was excellent. However, the absolute highlight was the wine. The hotel had its own vineyard for many years and produced a wine they call ‘Empatia’. The vineyard is no more but the hotel bar still has some 2011 vintage available. Quite simply, it is one of the nicest wines we tasted and now (14 years old) is at its absolute peak. Go there.

AS with all of our stays at the Hotel Villa de Abalos we were just overwhelmed with the property. location, surrounds and fabulous views from our bedroom windows. With the windows wide open you could easily looking at wonderful panoramic paintings. The bedrooms are large, very clean and comfortable, feel very rustic and Spanish with large comfortable beds and great bathrooms. The creation of the beautiful stone building was a labour of love by the current owners who rebuilt from a shell of a very old state building. The hamlet of Abalos is filled with small streets and squares with beautiful stone buildings as well as an enormous ancient church. The are surrounded with Rioja grape vines for as far as the eye can see. The service and food at the hotel are superb, wind is inexpensive, a pre dinner Gin & Tonic is skilfully prepared and presented. Sitting on the patio in the garden at the back of the hotel under to shade of grape vines is bliss. My wife and I have stayed several times and always agree that the Hotel Abalos is probably our most favourite hotel in the world. This time we were touring Northern Spain including the Picos and decided to finish our trip together with one of our Sons and his wife here, they too were hugely impressed with the whole experience.

Free parking, Bidet in the bathroom, Limited dining options outside the hotel. No security safe in the hotel room.

I don't like writing reviews like these. The owener and staff were very nice. Facilities were great with 2 fatal flaws: 1) Not enough hot water capacity (I had cool to cold showers 2 out of 3 days). I mentioned it to the owner and was told there were too many guests. Thats a capacity proplem not a guest problem. 2) the rooms heat could not be controlled so if you wanted to relax in your room you had to crawl under the blankets or wrap them around you (it was a cold wet week - again, not the guests fault). Being a hotel owner is a hard business and hard decisions about resources can be difficult but excepting your guests to shower at 5am (which my wife got up to do) or in the evening is a deal breaker for me. Any guest, no matter how beautiful the hotel is or how nice the owner/staff are should not be expected to shoulder this deficiency. My strong suggestion is #1increase the hot water capacity and become the 5 star hotel you could and should be. I hope this issue is resolved.