There are some bottles where the price almost becomes part of the tasting experience!!

This is definitely one of them.

I picked up the Cepa Lebrel Reserva 2019 for £5.99 and opened it for a late September BBQ. Ribeye, Denver steak, minted lamb and sausages were all going over charcoal, so Rioja seemed a fairly obvious choice.

What I wasn’t expecting was quite how good this would be for six quid.

In the Glass

On the nose this is absolutely full of plum. Ripe, juicy plum rather than anything particularly dark or jammy, with some subtle oak sitting behind it.

That carries straight through onto the palate. Again, it’s ripe juicy plums leading everything, but then this lovely sweet baking spice comes through from the oak. I initially had it down as cinnamon, but the more I drank it, the more it felt broader than that. Sweet baking spice describes it much better.

And importantly, the oak isn’t taking over.

There’s enough of it to give the wine another layer and remind you that you’re drinking a Rioja Reserva, but the fruit remains the star. It’s generous, juicy and ridiculously easy to drink.

For £5.99, this is punching well above its weight.

With Food

This was opened specifically for a BBQ and it couldn’t really have been more at home.

Ribeye and Denver steak over charcoal gave it exactly what it needed. The ripe plum worked beautifully with the beef while the sweet spice and subtle oak felt completely natural alongside the smoke and char from the barbecue.

The minted lamb worked nicely too, but for me this was really a beef wine tonight. Fatty, charred steak and juicy Rioja is hardly reinventing the wheel, but there’s a reason the combination works.

Sometimes a pairing doesn’t need analysing to death. Steak, fire and Rioja. Job done.

The Value Question

This is where the bottle gets slightly ridiculous.

It’s £5.99.

I actually found myself feeling a bit sorry for the people who made it. There are grapes to grow, wine to make, barrels to buy, ageing, storage, bottles, corks, labels and transport before we even get into tax and everybody else in the chain needing their margin.

And somehow, at the end of all that, I’ve walked into a shop in England and bought a genuinely delicious 2019 Rioja Reserva for less than six quid.

Wine doesn’t always need to be profound. It doesn’t need to have twenty different flavours appearing over three hours and it certainly doesn’t need to cost £50 to be worth talking about.

Sometimes you open something cheap expecting a perfectly acceptable bottle of wine and instead find yourself thinking, bloody hell, this is actually gorgeous.

That’s exactly what happened here.

Through the Terroir Verdict

Cepa Lebrel Reserva 2019 isn’t trying to be one of Rioja’s great wines. What it does offer is bags of ripe plum, lovely sweet baking spice, restrained oak and a style that absolutely sings alongside grilled meat.

At £5.99, I genuinely don’t know what more you could reasonably ask of it.

This is exactly why I love finding wines at this end of the market. Expensive wine should be good. When a bottle costing less than six quid makes you stop and properly pay attention, that’s far more interesting.

An absolutely cracking little Rioja and one I’d happily buy again.