Promesa

Promesa is a wine label rather than a bodega you could drive to, which is the first thing to say about it. The front label carries the brand name, the DOCa Rioja seal and "Product of Spain", and nothing else. I have not been able to put a winery name to it, so what follows is what I can tell you: the region these wines come from, the rules they are made under, and the four bottles themselves. If you want a named grower with a face and a history, there are plenty of those elsewhere on this site. Promesa does a different job.

That job is honest, well-made Rioja at everyday money. Rioja DOCa covers more than 66,000 hectares across three areas and nearly 600 wineries, and it works to an ageing ladder that is written into law rather than left to the producer's judgement. A red Crianza has to have a minimum two-year ageing process with at least one year in a 225-litre oak barrel. A red Reserva needs three years between barrel and bottle, at least one of them in barrel and at least six months in bottle. That matters when you are buying at this price, because it tells you something real about a bottle before you have opened it. A Crianza at this sort of money has had its year in oak.

The Reserva's fruit is said to come from Rioja Alta and Rioja Alavesa. I cannot confirm that with a producer I cannot name, so treat it as unconfirmed, but both areas are worth knowing about either way. Rioja Alta is the largest of the three at 27,871 hectares, with calcareous-clay, clay-ferrous and alluvial soils, and enough spread of altitude that the higher sites hold their acidity and give wines with more ageing potential. Rioja Alavesa is smaller, 13,178 hectares in the south of Alava, and its soils are 95% clay-limestone. It is the coolest and dampest of the three areas, colder in both summer and winter, and the calcium in those soils is what gives its wines body. Tempranillo suits both, which is why it dominates.

The Crianza and the Reserva are the barrel-aged classics. Alongside them sit a young, unoaked Tempranillo and a Viura. Viura is Rioja's traditional white grape and the one most people never get to, because we all think of Rioja as red.

Promesa is not a discovery. It is a dependable range that earns its shelf space by being properly made Rioja at a price where a lot of what you can buy is not.