Abadía Retuerta LeDomaine

Monks of the Premonstratensian order settled on this bend of the Duero in 1146, on land given by a noblewoman of the Castilian court, and built an abbey of golden stone that stood for seven centuries. Abadía Retuerta LeDomaine occupies that abbey at Sardón de Duero, half an hour east of Valladolid, and the vines the canons planted in the Middle Ages have become one of the most respected estates of the Duero valley.

History

Santa María de Retuerta was among the first Premonstratensian houses in Spain, and its church, cloister and chapter house were built between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the transition from Romanesque to Gothic. The abbey was dissolved in the disentailment of 1835 and the buildings decayed as a farm for more than a century. In 1988 the Swiss pharmaceutical group Sandoz, later Novartis, bought the estate for its 700 hectares of land and replanted the vineyards, and the first wines under the Abadía Retuerta name appeared in 1996. The restoration of the abbey itself took a decade and the hotel opened in 2012 under the name LeDomaine, run by the estate and not by a chain. The church and cloister are listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural.

Architecture and design

The abbey is laid out in the classical monastic plan: a church with a tall nave and a dome over the crossing, a cloister of two storeys, the chapter house and the refectory. Restoration kept the stone, the vaults and the cloister arcades and inserted the hotel into the cells and the farm wings with minimal intervention. Interiors are in stone, oak and linen, with few colours beyond those of the building. The church is used for concerts and ceremonies; the cloister's upper walk gives access to the rooms.

Rooms and suites

There are 30 rooms and suites, in the former cells around the cloister and in the restored wings, with high ceilings, stone walls and views over the vines, the cloister garden or the Duero. A butler is assigned to every room, a feature the hotel has kept from its opening. The suites include one in the old abbot's quarters.

Dining

Refectorio, in the monks' refectory under a stone vault, holds a Michelin star for a tasting menu built on the estate's own garden, Castilian game and lamb, and the house wines. Vinoteca, in the former stables, serves a more informal menu of local cooking and tapas, and the terrace by the vines takes summer lunch. The winery is visited from the hotel, with tastings of the estate's single-vineyard wines in the cellars.

Wellness

The Santuario spa opened in 2014 in a wing of the abbey with an indoor pool, a sauna and steam room, treatment rooms and a garden pool for summer. Wine-based treatments draw on the estate; the hotel also runs cycling and walking through the vineyards and along the river.

Weddings and events

The abbey church, deconsecrated and restored, is one of the most remarkable wedding settings in Castile, and the cloister and gardens take receptions of a few hundred. Dinners are held in the refectory or in the cloister. Meeting rooms in the restored wings serve wine-trade events, boards and retreats; full buyouts are frequent for weddings given the small number of rooms.

Location

Sardón de Duero lies on the N-122 between Valladolid and Peñafiel, on the western edge of the Ribera del Duero wine route, though the estate's wines carry their own Vino de Pago status. Valladolid station, with AVE trains from Madrid in about an hour, is thirty minutes away; Valladolid airport is forty minutes and Madrid Barajas about two hours by road. Peñafiel and its castle are twenty minutes east. As a luxury hotel in the Duero valley it is the one with a cathedral-sized church inside its walls.