This piece first appeared as a post on Harpers Wine and Spirit website: View of La Rioja from the Sierra de Cantabria mountains “My favourite wine is Rioja.”. It’s a line I hear a lot. Despite the UK’s frequent absence on Rioja’s top five list of most important export markets, the British have had a long standing love affair with wines from this notoriously wealthy Spanish region. But whenever I hear the praises of Rioja sung, I always wonder which Rioja they mean. The past 2

My interview in Harpers Wine and Spirit with Mercedes López de Heredia from the legendary Rioja winery: Today’s Rioja has become a divided land. With an ever-growing number of wineries making young ‘modern’ fruit driven wines laden in new French oak, López de Heredia remains a bastion of the old ways, continuing to make wine in the same style and spirit as it was made 135 years ago.  The ghosts of López de Heredia’s generations of winemakers seem to permeate the layers of fun