Legacy Collection — IV
A deep dive into Rioja.
As our journey continues around the world of wine with our legacy collection, we finally come to Rioja in Spain. A land of hills and plains. Protected from the cooler, rain-laden air of the Spanish north and west coast by the Sierra de Cantabria mountains. It is named after the river Oja, a tributary of the river Ebro, which meanders gently through the region on its way to the sea.
Rioja is a wine region that a lot of people will associate with the red grape Tempranillo, to the point that many consumers have come to use the words Rioja and Tempranillo interchangeably. Despite this word association, Rioja is home to many more grape varieties. Fourteen grapes in total, five red and nine white. Including some other well known Spanish varieties such as Garnacha, Mazuelo, Graciano, Malvasia and Macabeo, (known as Viura in Rioja). These primary 14 grapes constitute the official varieties that can be grown and made into Rioja wines, but there are local varieties too that are still being discovered and identified.
However, it is not the specific grapes I wish to explore today with you all. There is another aspect to Rioja that is relatively unique in the world of wine, and it is a facet of Rioja that plays a large part in what can help an investor develop an eye for a good age-worthy fine wine. This is of course their Barrels, and more specifically the laws that dictate how long Rioja wine is to be aged in them.
The taste of a Rioja wine.
Rioja has a quite distinct flavour compared to a lot of regions in the world. Despite having quite a broad range of quality and style, they nearly all tend to have some exposure to oak barrels unless they are a Joven wine.
(Joven is the simplest denomination for a Rioja, and simply means the wine is sold young. Having never seen a barrel).
The oak barrels most common in Rioja are made of American oak that is a big part that gives Rioja its distinct vanilla flavour. And not just any old American oak barrels are used. It is often new oak that imparts the most flavour to the wine.
The specifics of the barrels are often left down to the individual bodegas and cooperatives that do most of the actual winemaking. And there is variety there, some wineries opting for old French barrels that give over very little flavour at all, and some using stainless steel tanks that retain the maximum amount of fruit-forward flavour. But generally, it is these younger oak barrels, often from America, that give Rioja its distinct flavour.
How does this help us work out which wines are fine wines?
To first understand this, we need to know what the laws are surrounding the use of these barrels and how long wine must be aged in them, in order to achieve different rankings.
The four categories are:
- Joven. The simplest of the four categories, with a very fruit-forward flavour and ready to drink pretty much as soon as it is bottled. There are no restrictions on how soon it can be sold after harvest.
- Crianza. A red wine that must not be sold until after its third year from harvest, and has to have spent a minimum of 6 months in oak cask.
- Reserva. A red wine that must not be sold until after its fourth year from harvest, and has to have spent a minimum of 1 year in oak barricas.
- Gran Reserva. A red wine that must not be sold until after its sixth year from harvest, and has to have spent a minimum of 2 years in oak barricas.
These different denominations are significant for a very good reason, and not simply because of the age that they represent in the wine when they are sold.
Imagine a Chardonnay that has seen oak. Particularly in America, there is a penchant for making a style of Chardonnay that is very oak heavy. Where the flavours of vanilla, coconut, and cedar are all very obvious. In order for the wine to be balanced, the ripeness and complexity of the grape before it was turned into wine needs to be exceptional if it is going to stand up to the intensity of flavour you get out of an oak barrel. Particularly a new one.
This is no different for a Rioja. When a winemaker is making a Gran Reserva wine that is going to be placed in oak for a minimum of two years, the grapes that are used for that wine need to be very ripe, full of complexity, have good acidity, and good structure. All of these things need to be present in order that the oak flavours do not overpower the wine and make it unbalanced. This naturally means that the grapes used to make a well balanced Gran Reserva, are going to be top quality.
As a result, you can nearly always guarantee that wines made for a Gran Reserva, if they have been received well and praised by critics, will be a good age-worthy wine with investment potential.
This is not the only benchmark of quality of course, and it is only a starting point. But when you are looking for fine wines from the Rioja region, looking for this Gran Reserva status is a great place to start.
So what have we included in our collection this week?
As you can see, we have a number of Reserva and Gran Reserva wines as part of this weeks collection. All of these will have undergone the strict ageing criteria afforded to them by their status. All of these wines come from bodegas and traditions that use only the best grapes, and all of these represent flagship wines.
In short, we have carefully curated a great selection here that we dearly hope you will love, and will fill your pockets with investment gains in due course.
For more news, knowledge, and wine chats?
As always, happy investing, and for more bite sized pieces of wine knowledge to help you navigate this fine wine market. Make sure to stay tuned for future articles, and check out our previous articles too.
Legacy collection — III Adventures with Whisky.
Legacy collection — II Burgundy and weather.
Legacy collection — I Napa Valley
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All the best!
