Rioja - Red Wines

A lovely Crianza from Bodegas Ruconia. This is a firm favourite at L&S. Lots of lively cherry fruit wrapped up in attractive vanilla oak. Medium bodied, the wine holds a good high tone throughout. Another Rioja that offers excellent value for money.

The sheer drink-ability of this wine marked it out from the first time we tasted it with the 2015 release. A blend of mostly Tempranillo with a splash of Viura and made using carbonic maceration to lock in the wonderful fresh primary fruitness. This is a sappy, juicy red with damson, cherr...(read more)

Intense, dark, red cherry colour. Strong aromas of tobacco, toasty notes, creamy and ripe blackberry aromas. Round, velvety and full of volume, leaving toasted, spicy notes on the palate.

Deeper colour than the 'Tinto', a raw freshness, a hint of reduction, super-taut black fruit and sappy energy from whole bunch fermentation. It's 'sauvage' energy is captivating from now and becomes more so with a little aeration.

Dense purple core. Almost Malbec-like nose – blue fruits and violets. Has a chalky texture and slightly chewy but fine-grained tannins. Tight at the moment with good structure and fresh acidity. Lively with a lick of salinity. There is a trademark chalky richness to all of the wines from t...(read more)

The fruit for this small cuvée comes from several small plots whose old vines of Garnacha and Garnacha Gris average 80 years old. The vineyards are all very high too at 700m. This gives the juice an intensity and also an incredible purity. This truly is a mountain wine. Fermented in...(read more)

Roberto Oliván continues to produce exquisite wines with deep saturated colour and explosive aromatics like this. Veriquete is a plot that is just under half a hectare at nearly 600 Mtrs up in the Sierra Cantabria Hills. A blend of Tempranillo, Garnacha, Viura and Malvasia from vine...(read more)

This one-hectare field blend of Garnacha with 10% Tempranillo and Malvasía was planted at the turn of the last century on red clay and sand soils. The resulting wine is rich and well upholstered with plenty of alcohol, a spicy, mulberry core and palate-cleansing acidity. Bold and complex.

Whereas the 'Los Corrillos' label is for a blend of plots around Vinaspre, this one is a single vineyard with a rather rock'n'roll name - it's geographical co-ordinates feature on a label that is otherwise very like the other Los Corrillos label. A similarly taut and defined fruit with liv...(read more)

Wonderful aromas of ripe blackberries warmed by the sun along with more 'sauvage' notes of crushed stems and pith on the palate. Like the Veriquete, but possibly more so, this has immense complexity for such a young wine and shows great promise for the future - but the sample bottle was fi...(read more)

From the third great vintage in a row, the 2011 Gran Reserva 904 is the product of one of only 14 vintages declared ‘excellent’ by the Rioja Consejo Regulador. Fantastically complex nose, rich and so enticing with the exotic smells of middle eastern spices, coconut and the whiff of incense...(read more)

This wine used to be known as Rivas de Tereso and is one of Sandra's very special, small production releases from a specific old vineyard of pure Tempranillo. As before this is fermented in amphoras and then aged for one year in barrels. Incredible purity to this fabulous wine. So mineral,...(read more)