Rioja Report 2025: Value & diversity
As well as its enviable reputation for fine and elegant wines that age for decades, Rioja continues to make delightful wines for every occasion and budget.
Walk into any supermarket in Spain and you will find wines from Rioja at prices that are clearly below the cost of production.
And in markets abroad, there are always deals for Rioja, even reserva and gran reserva wines.
But there is a difference between cheap (the ‘entry-level’ proposition Ines Salpico mentions in her introduction to this report) and value, and what we encountered in this tasting were wines offering fabulous pleasure, a sense of place and great bang for your buck! Value.
Scroll down for notes and scores of the tasting’s best value wines
It was a real delight to taste some delicious wines made by carbonic maceration – in which intact bunches undergo an initial stage of fermentation within the uncrushed grapes, in the absence of oxygen.
In this selection, Bodegas Feco and Bodegas Betolaza have produced intensely fruity Tempranillos that show off the full expression of the variety.
This method – which leaves a little carbon dioxide in the wine – is an important part of the history of Rioja. In fact, up until a couple of centuries ago, it was the only way of making wines that were generally enjoyed young in the year of production.
They offer intense and immediate pleasure.
There are also so many great-value wines in this tasting that represent the character of Rioja’s vineyards. Berta Valgañón’s Selección Natural comes from vines in Villaseca, near the Obarenes mountains west of Haro, and offers concentrated blueberry fruit, aromas of undergrowth and a mineral core.
On the other hand, Ramón Bilbao’s Viñedos de Altura combines parcels in Abalos, just east of Haro, and Tudelilla in Rioja Oriental. The wine reveals fresh herbal aromas and spice, with plush red berry fruit: a well-made blend of these two zones of production.
Bang for your buck
Among these top-scoring, affordable wines, we also find characterful Garnachas that at once embody both elegance and broad appeal.
The higher zones of Rioja Oriental are delivering some of the best examples, such as Finca La Montesa from J Palacios Remondo.
The grapes for this wine, in which strawberries and peppery spice combine with fresh acidity and marked minerality, come from vines grown on the slopes of the Yerga mountain.
Ortega Ezquerro’s OE Garnacha also comes from Rioja Oriental, from Finca El Monte at 680m, where the soils are very stony. With dried herbs, blood orange and plum, the wine is vibrant and zesty.
And let’s not forget about traditional styles of crianza, wines aged for at least two years, one of which must be in oak. The go-to drink of locals in the bars of Rioja, crianza wines can offer all the bright red berry fruit and spice of the Rioja vineyards combined with fresh, balsamic oaky characteristics.
The cooperative in Labastida has produced a very satisfying, textbook crianza under the Manuel Quintano label that offers a welcoming blend of sweetness and structure – a well-made wine that can be enjoyed any day of the week.
Whether in a tapas bar in Rioja, or a wine bar in London, I would be sublimely happy if someone offered me a glass of any of the wines selected here.
They reveal a clearly defined vision of Rioja and immediate drinking pleasure, and they offer fabulous value, particularly those wines retailing at around £15-£20.
I would argue that there are very few wine regions in the world that can offer such outstanding quality at similar prices.
Rioja Report 2025: The best for value
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