Tempranillo is a hardy grape, able to withstand heat in the growing season and then to handle long oak aging in its upbringing. The wine is solid performer, always complex and rewarding. This, from an estate started in 2000 by husband and wife winemakers, is intense purple with a cherry rim. There's a mix of wild berries on the nose, mainly blackberry and raspberry. The palate is very balanced with good structure. A very approachable wine with a long finish and in an easy drinking style....there's a lick of spice on the back of the palate. Elegant and supple, and perfect for summer BBQs.

When we think of the Spanish wine region of Rioja, our minds immediately turn to grand old wineries, dictated by strict traditions and ancestral ways of doing things. In this sense, Paco Garcia is something of a breath of fresh air - it’s a bodega which rips up the rulebook, sets itself out as an unashamedly modern winery, and makes wine with a young, savvy and outgoing customer base in mind. By balancing this contemporary approach with a timeless sense of quality and excellence, the results are rarely anything less than spectacular. Francisco and Julia, the couple behind this winery, started out as grape growers intending to sell their fruit to upmarket boutique wineries in their region. However, it soon became apparent that they’d be better off taking full control of the entire process from vine to bottle, as this was the only way that their unique vision could be realised. When a grape crisis hit the region at the turn of the millennium, they used the opportunity to carve a new niche in Rioja, and fix their sights on a newer, younger, more open-minded audience looking for something authentic, original and unpretentious. Their Rioja uses exceptionally high quality Tempranillo grapes, a range of low-interventionist and occasionally vegan methods, and tosses away much of the oaking and unnecessary fiddling about that interrupts the real flavours of the land coming across in the glass. This is Rioja without the fuss; Old World wine with a New World ballsiness… and it hits the perfect balance every time.