Campillo Reserva 2008 ****

It awes me how much wine you get for the money in Rioja. This was 8E and at that range I am normally left with the feeling that it is not wine Im drinking.

Dark fruits over a wonderful base of mushrooms, cedar, cigar, rosemary, nice coarse texture.

Held itself up strong over two days plus 4 hours decanter.

If anything negative about this wine is that the fruit is a bit too powerful for what I think Rioja is about. But that'll come with age.

Had it with lamb rack and zucchini risotto. Well, mostly the risotto as my 2y old daughter ate all my lamb. She just loved eating meat off the bone, like Gimli.

This time I used DeCecco arborio rice instead of generic brand arborio rice and it was a good .70E extra spent. the texture of the risotto was like in italy where the rice is floating around in a starchy sauce while the generic brand gets more mushy.