Finca Manzanos Tempranillo Rioja 2023

Bright and juicy Tempranillo from Rioja, with a warming, perfectly integrated lick of oak, this is round and smooth, medium-bodied and balanced with fresh juiciness and a gorgeously long finish.

Strawberry fruit compote with cleverly smooth vanilla notes: classic Rioja at a perfect price point.

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.