Rioja Report 2025: Fresh reds
Rioja and oak go hand-in-hand but the region's winemakers are also recapturing an early-drinking style alive with herbs and fresh red berry fruit.
Those first aromas, that first sip. Blueberry fruit, red berries, rose petals and wild mountain herbs. This is Rioja.
When a wine transports you to this wild and beautiful landscape, it bathes you in the warm, soft glow of pure joy and pleasure – drinking becomes an emotional experience.
The genérico category – wines without an age-related classification such as reserva or gran reserva – was easily the largest of this tasting, and it was where we encountered some of the most exciting wines.
Scroll down for notes and scores of the tasting’s best fresh reds
We tasted 274 wines in this category but only 58 have retail pricing below the £15 mark. What was once a classification simply for young wines – with just one or two years of ageing – is now dominated by some of Rioja’s most outstanding cuvées.
Sense of place
Purity and freshness define the top wines in this selection. Their focus? Specific vineyard sites, villages or varieties. These are wines that truly speak of their origins and invite an immediate connection with the vines from which they’re sourced.
El Palacio from Luis Cañas is a blend of Tempranillo, Graciano and Viura, all from one parcel planted in 1969 with different orientations and surrounded by indigenous scrubland.
The varieties are fermented together in wooden vats and then aged in large 500L barrels – gentle winemaking that simply supports the fruit for the fullest of its expression.
Other excellent wines in this category show off Rioja’s rich tapestry of varieties. The seductively inviting La Quinta Cruz from Miguel Merino is made from Mazuelo (one of only a few single-variety Mazuelos in Rioja) from a 1.2ha vineyard in Monte Calvario de Briones where the soil is poor and covered with stones.
A light touch is shown here, with the wine spending 12 months in a combination of concrete and bocoys of 500L.
Proelio has also produced a stunning single-variety wine, La Canal del Rojo, this time from Garnacha in Badarán. Fermented in concrete (with stems), it spends 15 months in 20hl oak vats to preserve the integrity of both the varietal and vineyard characters.
Varied expressions
The styles of the wines in this selection also highlight the diversity of the category and of Rioja itself. Tom Puyaubert’s Exopto 2023 is a young, vibrant wine, a blend of Garnacha, Tempranillo and Graciano, that is aged for just six months in concrete, oak vats and used oak.
It’s a joyful explosion of fruit from old vines in Alfaro and Abalos. Beautiful in its simplicity, it’s a wonderful, unadulterated expression of the vineyards.
Carlos Sánchez interprets his vines differently, producing the fine, elegant La Bendecida.
Coming from a tiny 0.2ha vineyard in San Vicente de la Sonsierra, this field blend of Viura, Tempranillo and Garnacha undergoes spontaneous fermentation and is aged on fine lees for 15 months in used barrels.
While hesitant to make comparisons, I could argue that this is the most Burgundian of the wines in this selection. Certainly, it’s a beautiful reflection of Rioja’s historical vineyards.
This selection of genérico wines consists of producers big and small, all committed to expressing Rioja’s varied terroir. The wines’ ageing potential is impressive, although it will be hard to resist drinking them young: approachability and longevity aren’t incompatible.
Quite simply, they are wines that rival the best in the world.
Rioja Report 2025: Best of the fresh reds
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