October is grape harvest time in Spain. While tourists never really crowd the Basque part of the Rioja wine-growing region, they start thinning out at summer’s end. That’s hard to figure, since it’s an area where wine is hardly the only thing to drink in. Besides inventive restaurants and graceful medieval views, the Basques have a proud history, and most residents seem to have an easy-going, self-effacing air.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard one particular regional joke/proverb during our week’s trip, I’d have enough for a nice meal. It goes: “Sex is not a sin here, it’s a miracle.” The point seems to be that the always-industrious Basques now are busily re-shaping their rust-belt image into one of high-tech and haute cuisine.

Bacalao, or salt cod, is a regional specialty in San Sebastián.

The Guggenheim museum, designed by Frank Gehry, which opened in 1997, spawned a term called the “Bilbao Effect,” which notes that impressive architecture can attract worldwide attention and bring in tourists.

Local wineries are working to attract new visitors with their own dramatic buildings, so the present peace and quiet might not last. Outside the walled, hilltop village of Laguardia (which our Lonely Planet guide called the prettiest of the wine towns) is the Marqués de Riscal Winery. French Winemaker the Marqués de Riscal brought French Médoc viticulture to this winery in the 1850s, though local winemaking pre-dated that by centuries.

Rioja wines lean heavily on the distinctive tempranillo grape, but during a tasting at Marqués de Riscal Winery, my favorite was the 1998 Gran Reserva cabernet. Owing to the vintner’s century-and-a-half relationship with France, Riscal has special dispensation to use cabernet grapes.

A high point of the Riscal tour included a walk through the ancient cellars, where cobwebs partially hid bottles of every vintage since 1862.

Riscal’s ancestors recently built a Frank Gehry – designed winery, hotel and spa. The five-star Hotel Marqués De Riscal opened last month; it has 43 luxury guestrooms and suites, a restaurant and spa. The building is draped in undulating metallic fabrics like a Michelangelo Madonna.

Close to the Marqués de Riscal Winery, the magnificent Ysios Winery was built by another hot architect, Spaniard Santiago Calatrava, in 2001. From afar, Calatrava’s undulating wine cathedral appears pixilated as it rises dramatically from the stony vineyards. In contrast, tucked away among Ysios grape vines is a dolmen, a sort of stone igloo built around 3000 B.C. by Druid-like ancients, which highlights the modernity of Calatrava’s shrine to wine.

Calatrava also designed a signature footbridge in downtown Bilbao. In the United States, Calatrava was responsible for the soaring 2001 redesign of the Milwaukee Museum of Art. He is now upping the ante with his proposed world’s tallest building in Chicago.

In contrast to the modernity of the two wineries, the town of Laguardia, Spain is full of medieval ambiance. Kids play soccer on the cobblestones in front of the Gothic Church of Santa María de los Reyes, which, thanks to a sheltered portico, has about the best-preserved Gothic art anywhere. Life-sized and vividly painted 14th century figures, including Mary, Jesus and the apostles, look down on modernday visitors.

After an unforgettable meal of hake chins in the regionally distinctive pil-pil style (sautéed with garlic and olive oil) in our hotel, Hotel Villa Laguardia, we headed a few miles north to coastal San Sebastián feeling like Hemingway’s protagonist in The Sun Also Rises. (Jake Barnes went to San Sebastián to swim off the debaucheries of wine-soaked Pamplona.)