A funkadelic label but the wine is true Rioja. 100% Tempranillo with loads of hit and not overblown oak. If you like your oak, then go Vina Olagosa Perica Reserva, if you like more of the fruit but a big big number go 6 cepas 6. Lovely garnet colour, restrained oak allowing scents of sweet spice and undergrowth. Ripe blackberry fruit, warm clean palate. Well balanced and ripe tannins. 

Why this 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.