The other evening I attended a private tasting event featuring the wine from a new boutique Spanish winery. It was a very pleasant wine, smooth, creamy and easy to drink, but it was totally devoid of personality or any sense of place, yet alone any sense of that place being Spain. It was, in fact, a prime example of that bane of the current wine scene, an international style wine. That is, a wine designed to pander to the pernicious ratings points system, but which could as easily have come from Sonoma or Sicily. Moreover it was ridiculously over priced.

After an hour or so this featured wine ran out – it really wasn’t that bad – so our host resorted to his own cellar, pulling out a few bottles of Montecillo Reserva, Rioja 2003 ($18), a widely available and always reliable wine, and I was reminded what Spanish wine should taste like.

Good Rioja like this displays that unmistakable dry, dusty quality that reminds me of the experience of entering an old, dark Spanish church on a hot summer’s day; the smell of worn stone, ancient wood, and centuries’ worth of incense and smoke from the candles of the faithful.

This Rioja evokes just such a response in me thanks to its rich, smoky flavors laced with hints of deep mystery. It is as darkly evocative as a painting by Velasquez or Ribera and quite unmistakably Spanish.