The Many Facets of Rioja

Diving into the Rioja red wine piscina can be at turns fascinating and confusing. My advice is to approach the region without preconceptions. Rioja produces Tempranillo-based reds that range in style from hyper-traditional, often rustic and austere wines that wouldn’t be unfamiliar to a time traveler from the 19th century to flamboyantly rich, fruit-driven, new oak-influenced bottlings that would blend in well—and even stand out for their sheer quality—in blind flights of high-end Napa or Bordeaux wines.

Autumn in the high elevation vineyards of Granja Nuestra Señora de Remelluri

Somewhat predictably, this dichotomy has polarized Rioja drinkers; in particular, fans of the traditional style are likely to rail against the new kids on the Rioja block. In their view modernista Riojas are anonymous oak beasts and an existential threat to the heritage and identity of the zone, a viewpoint that should be very familiar to readers who have followed similar clashes of ideology in Burgundy and Piemonte over the last few decades.

The trend toward the use of small and often new French oak barrels that took off in earnest in the 1980s rocked the Rioja boat because the region’s almost universal M.O. since its establishment in the late 1800s was to age its wines in large oak casks, virtually all of them made from American oak. That wood, as most wine lovers know, imparts its own set of distinctive, usually easily recognizable aromas and flavors to wines, especially those of coconut and torrefaction. American oak is still in wide use here and Rioja is, along with Australia, the only world-class wine-producing region that relies heavily on it today. So while traditionalists don’t complain much about the often domineering presence of American lumber in their young Riojas, the usually more elegant character that French oak imparts apparently raises their ire, which is tough for me to understand. My recommendation is to keep an open mind: why limit your choices?