2021 Bodegas Gomez de Segura 'Mitxarro' Rioja Alavesa

Most Rioja I taste was built in a boardroom. This one is named after a vineyard a father loved.

Bodegas Gómez de Segura started in 1948 in El Campillar, a hamlet inside Laguardia. The third generation runs it now, Ana and José Antonio.

The vines sit under the Sierra de Toloño on free-draining clay-limestone. Sheep manure instead of chemicals. All estate fruit, all Tempranillo.

Mitxarro is the bottle they made because one block kept outperforming the rest. They picked it by hand into fifteen-kilo crates. The fruit was destemmed and held ten extra days on skins after fermentation finished. Malolactic went into barrel.

Then fourteen months in new French oak, extra-fine grain, and a long rest in bottle.

What comes out is dark and serious without the dried-out, over-oaked character that ruins so much traditional Rioja. There is real tannin under the fruit. It handles a steak tonight. It will handle a better one in three years.

Decant it an hour. Then get out of its way.