A world of flavour in Rioja

Chicken tagine with olives and preserved lemons.

Rioja is such a well-known, well-loved wine that it’s easy to take the kind of food you pair it with for granted – the assumption being that it will be red wine and that lamb will top the list.

Nothing wrong there, of course. No one who’s been to the region and feasted on those absolutely delectable, sweet, smoky lamb cutlets cooked over an open fire of vine cuttings would disagree. But there’s a lot more to Rioja than that. The fact that it comes in more than one colour, for a start.

Diverse reds

First, let’s dig a bit deeper into what you could pair with a red Rioja, depending on price and style. As you probably know, the classification system – crianza, reserva and gran reserva – is indicative of age. But these days that isn’t the whole story. Gran reservas are more vibrant and intense than they once were, so the recommendation to drink them with feathered game, for example, might seem misplaced. Mind you, Rioja does age well – so with older vintages that’s still good advice.

Many Riojas though, and not just the young ones, are made in a much bolder, more fruit-forward style that make them perhaps better suited to cuisines other than Spanish. Even more so when the dominant grape is Graciano rather than Tempranillo, which lends an exotic edge to a wine that I always think goes particularly well with Middle Eastern food.

I’ve also