Rioja

Rioja is to Spanish wine what Real Madrid is to Spanish football: a leader that is admired not just in Spain but around the world.

The region of Rioja has become a brand in itself and has long been synonymous with ripe reds aged for long periods in American oak barrels to give it a distinctive vanillla or coconut flavour – but there’s a lot more to Rioja today.

While vineyards were planted here in Roman times, Rioja benefited from France’s misfortune in the 19th century. The phylloxera-ravaged Bordeaux area forced merchants to head southward and many set up new wine businesses in Rioja. This is the reason why Rioja has long been focused on brands and merchants rather than single-grower, site-specific wines. The Bordelais also introduced small oak barrels that were traditional in Bordeaux; American barrels appeared later on the scene thanks to their lower prices.

Famous for its wines made from a blend of Tempranillo and Garnacha with small percentages of Mazuelo and Graciano, the oak-aged, traditional Riojas, partiularly the Gran Reservas, display savoury and earthy characters due to the slow oxidation in barrel. The modern incarnations of Rioja that spend less time in oak (or none at all) are bright and bouyant with red-fruit characters underpinned by a mineral freshness.

The wines of Rioja are traditionally classified as Joven (young, with no oak ageing required), Crianza (aged for two years, minimum one in oak), Reserva (three years with minimum one in oak) or Gran Reserva five years, with minimum two in oak). While Gran Reserva styles have historically been considered the top of the quality pyramid in Rioja, this was based on the premise that only the best wines would be selected to undergo such lengthy ageing. While that holds true for the region’s best wineries, others have been less scrupulous and it pays to choose wisely.

A wave of producers has moved away from using the traditional ageing-based classification, despite ageing their wines for the required periods in oak, some favouring new French barriques over American oak; while others are now avoiding new wood in favour of neutral, large-format oak vessels or cement, to channel the purity of a particular site, highlighting single vineyards from single estates, rather than the barrel the wine was aged in.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that Rioja also makes a few notable white and rosé wines. Oxidatively aged for lengthy periods in oak, the likes of Bodegas R. López de Heredia’s Viña Tondonia are as far removed from the modern, clean-as-a-whistle, aromatic white or rosé wines to which many consumers have grown accustomed. It’s partly for this reason that both the Blanco and even rarer Rosado enjoy a cult following.