Finca Manzanos, 1890 Rioja Blanco, Viñas Viejas 2023

Wonderful, round, smooth, fresh and vibrant, this is a white wine with depth, character and soaring quality, far beyond its price point.

It's another excellent white from Rioja, which is a region we are getting used to for giving really brilliant wines that over-achieve at their price point.

Made by our friends in Manzanos in the new subzone of Rioja Oriental, this is a wine that will make you think of the times when really good white Burgundy was available at this price. No Chardonnay here, this wine is ultra-traditional and is mostly Viura, but with a sizeable portion of Tempranillo Blanco, a variety that is almost endangered it is so rarely seen. 

The wine is made from carefully selected fruit, hand harvested and fermented on its lees firstly in stainless steel tanks before being transferred to large oak barrels to finish the fermentation and then resting there for four months. This allows for the skins to impart deeper flavours and richer texture; it also gives the wine some oak structure and lightly toasted aromas that integrate perfectly in the wine. It's very clever, traditional wine-making.

The nose delivers lovely flavours of peach, white blossom, citrus and tropical fruit with cashew nut and subtle brioche notes on top. The palate follows with a creaminess that comes from the ageing process and a continuation of the orchard fruit and integrated spice flavours from the nose. It's such good quality - deliciously complex and vibrant and fresh.

This is a  wine for all occasions - from fine dining at Christmas time all the way through to turning a Thursday night fish pie into a gourmet paradise.  

Finca Manzanos in Rioja is a family-owned and family-run winery that has established itself as one of the key players in this most important of European wine regions over the past decade. There is an interesting long-term play here, which is that many wineries in Rioja do not have the vision at their helm in the way that Manzanos does, specifically in the person of Victor. He is the latest Manzanos heir to run the firm which he has done since his father died suddenly, leaving him unexpectedly at the head of the family business. He was 21 at the time, finishing a Masters in the LSE. He's a smart cookie. The winery gave Vic challenges but he saw them as opportunities and he grown the winery to a whopping 250 hectares of vines that cover both Rioja and Navarra regions. Situated in the newly delineated Rioja Oriental subzone, the vines for this wine are old bush vines and are harvested and grown as though they were destined for Gran Reservas - it's the Manzanos way to put high quality into all of their projects, no matter if they are expensive or - like this - incredibly good value.

Vic is a cool character. He also owns a network of Porsche garages across Spain. When you arrive at the winery there are quite literally any number of brand new Porsches in the carpark. He picks one and goes for a spin: when I went with a friend, he picked a white, four-wheel drive sports thing with shiatsu massage chairs for the font passenger. Off we went in the lap of luxury, then he put the foot down and we all thought we could smell the cooking of our individual geese. This was because we saw the end of the road on which we were driving approach at a rate commensurate with something from a Crash Test Dummy advert. Zoom. Through the invisible barrier we went and onto the dirt tracks that ran between the vines. All the way until we stopped at the end of a row of vines. He flipped a switch and like Inspector Gadget, the car rose by what seemed a foot and we sped off again through the rest of the vineyard. This detour was so that he could skip rush hour traffic (which in Rioja couldn't be that bad) just to get us to the restaurant earlier than the other guests. He's brilliant. And wears beige suede loafers with a gold buckle with the letters LV on them. Very posh.