Rioja is such a well-known, well-loved wine that it’s easy to take the kind of food you pair it with for granted – the assumption being that it will be red wine and that lamb will top the list.
Nothing wrong there, of course. No one who’s been to the region and feasted on those absolutely delectable, sweet, smoky lamb cutlets cooked over an open fire of vine cuttings would disagree. But there’s a lot more to Rioja than that. The fact that it comes in more than one colour, for a start.
DIVERSE REDS
First, let’s dig a bit deeper into what you could pair with a red Rioja, depending on price and style. As you probably know, the classification system – crianza, reserva and gran reserva – is Lamb rogan josh indicative of age. But these
