Delightful garnet colour with orange tinge, powerful vanilla aroma. Refreshing berry notes, nuanced spice and a mellow, smooth, charming finish. Vina Olagosa Rioja Crianza for the most retains the lightish style, good oak, nice toasty nose, fruit. Yum Yum. Plenty of ripe plummy fruit, but it is not a jammy number, not a full on glass of Ribena sort of thing. 

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.

Scroll forward to today.