Siglo Special Selection Tempranillo Rioja Review – A Rioja That Could Be From Anywhere

I picked this bottle of Siglo Special Selection Tempranillo Rioja up today to go alongside some lamb steaks, and on paper it felt like a pretty safe bet.

Rioja and lamb is hardly reinventing the wheel, and Rioja has slowly become one of those regions I find myself gravitating towards more and more. Particularly at the cheaper end of the market, I think Rioja can offer an incredible amount of wine for the money.

Unfortunately, this one really didn’t.

The Packaging Had Me

I have to give Siglo some credit before getting into the wine itself because the presentation is brilliant.

The bottle comes wrapped in this almost rustic hessian style covering, with a deep red and gold label that gives the whole thing a slightly old school Rioja feel. It looks considerably more interesting than your average supermarket bottle and definitely played a part in me picking it up.

Maybe that was part of the problem.

Looking at the bottle, seeing Tempranillo and Rioja on the label, I think I had already built an expectation of what was going to be inside.

I wanted some proper Rioja character.

Where Is The American Oak?

This is where the wine really fell down for me.

One of the things I love about Rioja is that unmistakable oak character you can get, particularly when American oak is involved. That vanilla, coconut and slightly sweet spice character can make Rioja instantly recognisable, and when it’s balanced properly with the fruit and acidity I absolutely love it.

There was basically none of that here.

More importantly, there wasn’t really anything else coming along to replace it either.

The wine wasn’t offensive. It wasn’t undrinkable. It was just incredibly anonymous.

In The Glass

The biggest issue was the complete lack of length.

There was some fruit there, but nothing particularly distinctive and nothing that made me want to go back into the glass and work out what else was going on.

It just disappeared.

That’s probably the biggest criticism I can give a Rioja at the moment because I’ve had inexpensive examples that have delivered bags of character. Even when they’re relatively simple wines, you can often find something that tells you where the wine has come from.

With this, I genuinely felt like it could have been from anywhere.

If somebody had poured it blind and simply told me it was a generic inexpensive red wine, I don’t think there was anything in the glass that would have pulled me towards Rioja.

Rioja Has Set Its Own Benchmark

Maybe part of the problem is that I’ve been spoiled recently.

I’ve had some fantastic Rioja over the last few months, from Viña Tondonia Reserva and Viña Alberdi through to much cheaper bottles that have still managed to show proper regional character.

Obviously, it isn’t fair to expect a relatively inexpensive bottle to compete with Tondonia, but that’s not really what I’m asking it to do.

I just want it to taste like Rioja.

Give me some dried red fruit. Give me vanilla. Give me coconut, tobacco, leather or spice. Give me that lovely acidity running through the wine and something that hangs around after I’ve swallowed it.

Just give me something.

With The Lamb

The lamb steaks should have been the perfect partner.

Normally, the fat and protein in lamb work brilliantly with Tempranillo, softening the tannins and allowing the fruit and oak to come through. It’s one of those combinations where you don’t really have to think too hard about the pairing.

Unfortunately, there simply wasn’t enough going on in the wine for the food to unlock.

The lamb didn’t ruin the wine. It just highlighted how little character there was to begin with.

Final Thoughts

This was a disappointing one.

Perhaps the packaging raised my expectations more than it should have, because it certainly looks the part. Unfortunately, what’s inside doesn’t live up to it.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Siglo Special Selection Tempranillo. If you simply want an easy bottle of red wine with dinner, it’ll do the job.

But Rioja can offer so much more than that, even without spending serious money.

For me, the lack of American oak character, the short finish and above all the lack of any real sense of place make this very difficult to recommend.

It looks like Rioja, It says Rioja.

I just wish it tasted more like Rioja.