With the Rioja Tinto we come to maybe more interesting, to us, style of wine, where the Spanish especially the young have had a say and I think Perica’s is an absolute stunner.Lovely ripe damson and plum fruit flavours, but with a real clout, and a very slight touch of oak. You know you've got a real red wine in your hand.  Entry level Rioja had tended toward the acidic and oxidised but with the rise of the youth market and new drinkers and diners a fresher fruitier red was called for and Rioja did the business. Good wine making, a forward style with good extract from both Tempranillo and a little Garnacha, maybe a tiny 20% of oak for a cheating sniff of sweetness and the wine was there. Why Perica’s Mi Villa Rioja Tinto is a cut above is that they have not tried to over-crop, to dilute the fruit in the pursuit of profit and then cover with semi oak ageing. This is a very lush wine for not a great deal of money. Made by a family winery who are trying their best to get with it but not doing so at the expense of flavour.

Now you don’t need a lot of historical guff to know how popular Rioja is, or really why it is. It is a comfortable friend on a list, we feel happy knowing we’ll get something reliable from it, and have done for years really. Old Hugh Johnson was saying it in 1965, reliable, nice fruit, lot of flavour, gentle oak, approachable. And this is not artificial, it’s been like this for years. In red wines at least.

Double reason for this from our hazy memory. 1. Rioja vineyards planted in 1850s by wealthy merchants/industrialists from the Basque region, which is just over a mountain range from Rioja to the coast. They wanted fragrant reds (yes reds) to serve light and chilled with the fish and meats they ate. 2. At the same time French merchants began to look across the border when Phylorexia struck their vines. There was a cross fertilisation of knowledge but it meant that the Crianza style we have today is very much the wedding of Tempranillo reds wanted by the Basques with a lick of oak ageing learnt from the French. Of course oak came to predominate in all Spanish red wines, but here it is gentle to start with. This is to simplify and not all wineries did the same things but it does to get our bearings.