Top 100 wines of La Rioja
Discover the top 100 best wines of La Rioja as well as the best winemakers in the region. Explore the varietals of the wines that are popular of La Rioja and the best vintages to taste in this region.
Discovering the wine region of La Rioja
La Rioja is a wine region in the foothills of the Andes Mountains in western Argentina, North of Mendoza and San Juan. Unlike its Spanish namesake, it has traditionally been associated most closely with white wines.
The mountainous Terroir of the region is particularly suited to the Torrontés Riojano variety, which produces Fruity, Soft, Aromatic whites. Bonarda, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec can also be found growing throughout the region.
Locals argue that La Rioja was one of the first Argentinian regions to have vines Planted in it, and Spanish settlers in the late 16th Century are widely credited with being the first to plant grapes here. La Rioja was named for the northern Spanish region by Juan Ramirez de Velasco, a native of the latter.
This has caused some animosity between the two regions. In 2011, the Argentinian province won a court case allowing it to continue to label its wines as 'La Rioja Argentina'.
Vineyard conditions in La Rioja
La Rioja's position in the rain shadow of the Andes range means that wine-producing areas are strictly governed by access to water. As a result, vineyard distribution is scattered.
There is a single main production area in the Famatina Valley, which sits in the mesoclimate formed by the Sierra de Velasco and the Sierra de Famatina mountain ranges. Some small vineyard areas can also be found around the towns of Nonogasta and Villa Union.
Discover the grape variety: Malbec
Malbec, a high-yielding red grape variety, produces tannic and colourful wines. It is produced in different wine-growing regions and changes its name according to the grape variety. Called Auxerrois in Cahors, Malbec in Bordeaux, it is also known as Côt. 6,000 hectares of the Malbec grape are grown in France (in decline since the 1950s). Malbec is also very successful in Argentina. The country has become the world's leading producer of Malbec and offers wines with great potential.
Food and wine pairing with a wine of La Rioja
wines from the region of La Rioja go well with generally quite well with dishes of beef, pasta or lamb such as recipes of korean bibimbap, pasta with walnuts and treviso red salad or canned cassoulet.
Organoleptic analysis of wine of La Rioja
On the nose in the region of La Rioja often reveals types of flavors of tropical, butter or microbio and sometimes also flavors of oak, tropical fruit or chocolate. In the mouth in the region of La Rioja is a powerful.
News from the vineyard of La Rioja
Champagne houses announce ‘first’ with B Corp certification
The Champagne houses, part of the family-owned EPI Group, announced their B Corp certification after scoring 91.9 points in the assessment by B Lab, a non-profit network founded in 2006 with the aim of improving corporate performance in the spheres of social and environmental issues, plus accountability and transparency. The certification involves an assessment of the social and environmental impact of each brand through more than 200 questions concerning governance, employees, communities and t ...
Collective Napa Valley wine programme makes debut
Described as a ‘year-round engagement and philanthropy programme’, Collective Napa Valley is the culmination of work to replace the annual Auction Napa Valley event that first started in 1981. The new programme was launched on Monday (10 September), with trade body Napa Valley Vintners (NVV) encouraging wine enthusiasts to sign up. While keeping a philanthropic principle, the new Collective programme is intended to reach a wider group of wine lovers – from high-end collectors to new drinke ...
Andrew Jefford: ‘2021 has been the year of all the miseries’
How’s the weather been this year? Awful. ‘La nature m’écoeure’, one of my wine-growing friends posted on Facebook on 8 April, having been out to look at the frost-crippled shoots on his vines that morning: ‘Nature disgusts me’. It takes a lot to make a wine-grower feel that. He wasn’t alone. Jeremiads echo around the northern hemisphere as 2021 closes. It’s been the year of all the miseries. None suffered more horribly than the growers of Germany’s Ahr valley, where floodwaters caused by the fou ...