Serving Rioja Wine

Series Summary

Wine is a beverage almost as varied and unique as the people who drink it. This is largely due to the fact that the finished wine product has a memory that preserves minute influences of flavor, color, and acidity. The individual complexities of a wine can be determined by such factors as soil mixture, temperature variation, grape variety, vintage, natural flavoring, yeast and the fermentation process, aging, choice of wood barrel, and the list goes on. There is a large subculture built around wine and wine making because there’s something in it for just about everyone. Also, wines taste different from one region to another. Each wine region can exclusively have their own branded wine. One of the most famous Spanish wines is Rioja. This seventy-five mile area has over 14,000 vineyards that produces Tempranillo, Granacha, Graciano, and Mazuelo grapes. In this free video series, learn all about Rioja wines. He takes the time to explain how Rioja wine is made. He also shows you how to serve and pair Rioja wines with food. Interested in the types of Rioja wines? Middlebrook talks about the best white and red Rioja wines. So, spice up an evening with Rioja Spanish wines today!

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Mark Middlebook. I'm here in the Paul Marcus Wines warehouse, and in this segment we're going to talk about how to serve and enjoy Rioja. And I have a nice Rioja Crianza here, that we'll open up and, and taste. I like to use a little bit bigger glass, for red Rioja especially. This is a Bordeaux sized glass. But anything will work that's you know, reasonably tall and narrow at the top so we can swirl it around and enjoy those great, great aromas, and spicy aromas of Rioja. So most Riojas come with, still come with cork. So we're going to take off the capsule first, using a knife, or a regular kitchen knife works too. And then put this puppy in there. One of the nice things about Rioja is that it comes to you by law already aged in the bottle. So in general you don't need to spend a lot of time letting it see air. You can open it up ahead of time if you want, it generally won't hurt it. You can decant it, and if it's an older bottle with sediment you probably want to. But with a you know medium aged, younger Rioja like this we don't need to. So we'll just pour it right into the glass. It has that nice kind of slightly lighter red color. We don't want to pour too much because we've got to be able to swirl this thing around and really, really get our nose in there and enjoy the smells. Um, there's a nice spicy, somewhat floral, maybe a little violet. Some, some saddle leather, a little earthiness. That's what I love about Rioja. And then we want to really, really enjoy this by tasting it. It's good."