Tasty tasty rioja

We drank another bottle of 2006 Sierra Cantabria last night.

I first started buying it maybe seven or eight years ago, from one of my local wine shops. Imagine our surprise and delight that several of our friends also knew about it. One of them, possessing a formidable palate for all things beer, wine and liquorish, had already discovered that for a red wine it took readily to light chilling! Predictably the flavor was quite different, but not diminished as with most chilled reds (other than lambrusco).

Unchilled, the bouquet was a glorious mix of roses, violets and raspberries; drinking it leaves tantalizing memories of those scents on your tongue, with the softest of tannins and just a hint of sweetness. Chilled, the sweetness is less noticable but the fragrances were still there. A great sipping red. Great with steak or pork or pretty much anything at all.

Then Wine Spectator did a huge feature on Spanish red wines, and to my dismay they gave Sierra Cantabria mega-points. And of course the wine vanished from my local shops. There were still a couple of shops selling it here and there in NYC but at higher prices, and mostly more recent vintages. My local guy figured the wine was being snapped up by restaurants.

The buzz must be over. The wine is back in my local wine shops. I am however a bit surprised at the vintages being so recent for a good rioja. We drink plenty of red wines fairly young, as they're meant to be drunk, but I'm used to seeing riojas at least 4 or 5 years old. Never mind. I've been buying it, and we've been loving it again.

Last night it went great with comfort food, fresh green linguine topped with the world's easiest meat sauce: 1/2 lb ground pork and a package of chopped cremini mushrooms, browned in olive oil with oregano and black pepper, mixed with a pint of Agata & Valentina's Pomodoro Sauce. Heaven.