So first things first, the Co-op aren’t going to blow anyone away with their description of this wine. How boringly unimaginative? Perhaps the writer had the same taste experience I had…

Here’s how the website describes it:

Classic Rioja full of baked red fruit character. Enjoy with lamb dishes or stews.

Here are the vital stats:

• Alcohol by volume: 12.5%
• Country: Spain
• Winemaker: Gran Familia
• Grape variety: Tempranillo
• Wine colour: Red
• Type of closure: Natural Cork

Awards:

• International Wine Challenge 2014 Quality Assured – Silver

The Babbling Brookes’ verdict

For £6 a bottle from Co-op, it was a non-starter for us. I opened the bottle and poured my wife and I a glass of this stuff after a hard day at work. My wife’s face dropped after her first sip and she grimaced as though her occasional, but much adored, treat had just been snatched away from her weary clutches. “That’s awful” she exclaimed as my own glass was veering towards my parched lips. “Nonsense”, I thought as I awaited my first taste of the good stuff. Pffhhhhh, she was right! Disgusting. Imagine taking a bag of molding wet leaves and putting them into a blender with 10-year old rotten, louse-infested timber. Add a few teaspoons of caustic soda, a raw egg and 100ml of rust water and bob’s your uncle…you have made a concoction that tastes worse than this wine.

Ok, so it was obviously corked, stored badly or spoiled in some other way, but for £6, I wasn’t inclined to try to seal up the bottle and take it back to the Co-op for a refund. This said, I have no other experience of this wine and wouldn’t fancy wasting another £6 to verify my findings. This has no reviews on the Co-op website but I did manage to find one review on this wine by a guy named “Ray” on www.mysupermarket.co.uk. He gives it a 5 out of 5 rating. I have to disagree, Ray, based purely on the bottle I tried. It’s a shameful 0 out of 5 from me.

If you’ve tried this wine, please PLEASE let me know what you think of it. Tell me how wrong I am and I why I should be tempted to try this one out again (if I do, I’ll update this post!).

Feeling brave with a spare £6 to burn? Try it yourself and let us know what you think:

https://www.coop.co.uk/products/gran-familia-rioja-tinto-680240