Wine of the Week: The Society’s Exhibition Rioja Reserva 2017

There are apparently only low stocks left of The Wine Society’s Exhibition Rioja Reserva 2017 which should encourage you to snap up a few bottles if you're a member.

You might say with some justification that you can’t get a rioja for less than the £16 it costs but this is a particularly good buy, made for the Society by La Rioja Alta which normally charges a good bit more for its wines (Their 2015 Viña Ardanza Reserva, for example, is just under £26 at Lay & Wheeler)

It’s made very much in the traditional mellow oak-aged style and is drinking really well right now. It would be the perfect wine for Easter if you’re having planning to have roast lamb or beef.

The best food pairings for rioja

If you're looking for another wine to make up a case I really like the latest vintage of the Society's Exhibition Santorini Assyrtiko at £14.95, a bright zesty white that would be great with taramasalata, olives, tsatziki and other meze as well as spanakopita, pretty well any kind of seafood and grilled lamb.

Rioja - and rioja drinkalike - bargains

Rioja remains one of the most popular reds in the UK, not least because of its price, and there are two bargains right now that any rioja-lover should snap up.

Majestic has 25% off all riojas this weekend which brings their gold medal-winning* own label 2009 Definition Rioja Reserva down to £8.99 if you buy six bottles instead of the ‘normal’ price of £11.99 (though admittedly it’s usually discounted to £9.99 on the ‘mix six’ deal). That’s a really good price for a nearly seven year old wine that still shows plenty of opulent ripe fruit. Unusually it’s aged in French and Caucasian barrels rather than the usual - for Rioja - French oak. One for your Sunday roast.

The other is a more unusual wine from Sainsbury’s - the Taste the Difference Graciano 2014 which actually comes from La Mancha, not Rioja, but is made from one of the grapes used in the Rioja region. It’s a younger wine - a deep, exotic, fragrant red that would work well if you were cooking a middle-eastern Ottolengi-ish lamb dish and is fantastically good value at £6 a bottle with a further 25% off from next Tuesday if you buy six. So just £4.50 - a no-brainer really.

I’ll be posting my selection of Sainsbury’s wines early next week so you can take advantage of that offer.

*At this year’s International Wine Challenge

Cune Gran Reserva Rioja Imperial 2005

It’s easy to overlook the familiar in favour of the esoteric, particularly when you’re a wine writer but it’s hard to think of a bottle that consistently gives more pleasure than Cune’s Gran Reserva Imperial Rioja.

OK, it’s not cheap but even the recommended retail price of £26.99 is not a great deal to pay for a wine that you can rely on to impress. After all most champagne special offers bring them down to this sort of price and most people think that makes them a good buy.

Gran reserva, for those of you who are not familiar with the term, is the top wine classification of the Rioja region. A wine that has been aged for five years, a minimum of two in oak and a further three in bottle. This wine is already over eight years old

Having enjoyed the 2001 and 2004 (which I've just discovered was voted Wine Spectactor wine of the year) I was a little apprehensive about the 2005 - an unusually hot vintage - but it has the same seductive, soft, velvety fruit that other gran reservas struggle to preserve. The Rioja authorities categorised the vintage ‘excellent’ but then all their vintages are rated at least ‘good’.

The obvious food pairings would be roast lamb, feathered game like pheasant and pigeon and sheeps’ cheese but we enjoyed it with a very intensely flavoured fish stew at a friend's last night and it sailed through.

It’s widely stocked so it’s worth checking wine-searcher.com for the best current price. Winedirect.co.uk and Eton Vintners have it for £24.95 and D. Byrne of Clitheroe who are not online for £22.99*. You might be able to find the 2007 (a "very good" vintage according to the Consejo Regulador) a little cheaper but having won the Wine Spectator's endorsement the 2004 will cost a lot more. If you can even find a bottle . . .

* Apologies for earlier, lower prices which related to the reserva not the gran reserva.