There once was a legendary wine-blogger called Chris Coad. Well, there still is, although he keeps a low-to-nonexistent profile these days (archived website of The Compleat Winegeek here), depriving us of his undeniably brilliant talents as a critic and Pepysian commentator on the folly of human nature and Brad Kane.
Amongst the finest moments of Coad’s brilliant career were his serial installment posts of “Boatloads of Cheap Crap,” a lively and irreverent chronicle of *ahem* moderately priced wines. Coad’s boat was invariably filled with what was indeed cheap crap, but there always seemed to be the occasional jewel glimmering amidst the bilgewater.
Were Coad still floating his boatloads, I like to think this one would rise to the top: LAN Rioja Crianza 2011. Picked up for the nowadays lowly sum of $9.60USD, this is what wine people call a “sleeper” (translation: “Whoa. Damn, this is good! Shoulda bought more.). The more sophisticated wine connoisseur might even say, casually and offhand, “nice little food wine”, almost in dismissal (translation: “It’s not an over-the-top blockbuster diva of spoofulation and actually tastes good with food.”). Coad would simply say “I’d buy it again.” For him, that was the highest accolade. (Well that, and something called “prongs”, but, seriously, let’s not go there.)
LAN Rioja Crianza 2011 is both a sleeper and a food wine. It’s also a tasty and surprisingly honest and straightforward 100% tempranillo with better-than-it-has-to-be depth and complexity. It somehow manages to suggest youthful and fruity vigor and freshness while at the same time genially indicating there’s more there than you might think and if you were to lay it away for a couple of more years you might have a gorgeously mature little seductress rather than a nubile charmer. Okay, that was a mixed metaphor, but I hope you get the gist: good now; even better later.
Bright, simple red cherry fruit, tasty and quaffable…but hold on a sec: there’s a leathery, slightly tart and mildly tingling tannic edge, a good balance of acidity and oak, that goes far beyond what this price point usually delivers, and promises even more with patience.
It turns out LAN uses 100% tempranillo (freshness, brightness), then ages it in a clever combination of both French and American oak (which I do not believe I have seen elsewhere) for twelve months, then allowing it to remain in bottle for several more months to stabilize. That combination of oak gives a balance of the sweet vanilla of the tight-grained French and a touch of the herbal spice from the rougher-grained American, without allowing either to dominate.
The lovely lagniappe is that the vintage is 2011, so you have that currently out of the ordinary experience of enjoying
a balanced, structured, complex red wine that has been allowed to age and mature gracefully. And all for a remarkably nice price. Doesn’t get much better than that.
