2017 Amancio (Rioja)

The Eguren family have built up a formidable portfolio of vineyard and winery holdings. The properties stretch to Toro (where their Teso La Monja bodega is among, if not the best, of the region’s wineries) and La Mancha, where they produce a large amount of high-quality, ridiculously inexpensive wines under the Protocolo label. Laguardia, in Rioja Alavesa, is their ancestral home, where Sierra Cantabria been growing grapes and making wine for five generations going back to 1870. The bodega, which was established in 1957, tends to a modern style of winemaking, with fruit, often of the dark, ripe school, to the front and French and American oak usually playing equal roles in their impeccably maintained cellar. To my mind these are wines that combine the best of the modern and traditional schools of Rioja, especially when they have some age.