Rioja Wine Grapes

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Part of the video series: Rioja Spanish Wines

Traditional vs. Modern Rioja Win...

Summary: The La Rioja region produces Graciano, Tempranillo, Viura, and Garnacha Blanca grapes. Learn more about the grapes that are used for Rioja wines from a professional sommelier in this free video.

Views: 201 | Tags: wine, white, tasting, red, spanish, wines, pairings, vineyards

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About the Expert
Contact: paulmarcuswines.com

Mark Middlebrook Mark Middlebrook sells and writes about wine for Paul Marcus Wines in Oakland, California. When he's not in the wine shop, he's often picking grapes, tying ... read more

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Video Transcript

Rioja Wine Grapes

Hi, I'm Mark Middlebrook and I'm here in the Paul Markus wine cellar and in this segment I'm going to talk about the grape varieties that you'll find in Rioja wines from Spain. White wine typically will be the principle grape variety, called viura the indigenous grape to this part of Northern Spain. In addition they use a little ganacha blanca, a wine granache, some malvesia sometimes. Viura is a pretty relatively full bodied, full textured type of white wine, but made still fairly crisp and dry. The red Rioja's are typically based on tempranillo, which is a kind of the famous red wine grape of Spain. You see it grown a little bit in other countries, but Rioja in Northern Spain in general is where it comes from and where it does best and what that part of Spain is famous for. In addition wine makers will often blend in some mazuelo, some graciano, or garnacha or garnache in French. They just have some great varieties to grow in that region, but in most Rioja you'll find sixty to eighty percent of, sixty to ninety percent of the wine is based on tempranillo. Tempranillo is a little bit, is a light skinned grape which means it doesn't give a real dense dark color to the wine and of course that's okay. We're drinking it not most of the time just looking at it. And it gives us, can give a wine a nice finesse nice aroma a little bit of floral character, I often think of it as a smell of violets. A little bit of a spicy character. That's partly due to the wine making but I think the grape variety also gives that. A little bit of delicacy, it's not as big and burly as say, Cabernet Sauvignon, maybe not quite as elegant as Pinot Noir, but more in that direction in terms of the color and the weight of the wine. And again, completely unique, pretty much completely unique to Spain and what makes these wines, I think, so characterful and so fun to drink and so different from everything else.