Faustino I Gran Reserva 1996

My favourite wine in all the world in red Rioja wine. I reaffirmed the faith this evening with my family with my favourite bottle of my favourite wine from my favourite wine region: Faustino I Gran Reserva 1996 Rioja Tinto. Even its bottle is spectacular with a mottled grey effect covering all the glass, and its garish old world label with some old world portrait of guy from another era. The flavour takes me back to other places in time – I remember every bottle I’ve drunk – only three. The first in 1995 with Adam Shaw, Alison, Dan & Maddy at Adam’s flat in Clapham Junction, London. I was wearing my University College London rugby top. I’d only just got into the university rugby union side (the only person from a state school!). The bottle cost an exorbitant GBP12. Everybody was wowed. Maddy was rioja obsessed for weeks afterwards. The second bottle was in 1997 a few days after Pat and I got married. We drank it with her father and brother Patrick in our apartment in Ranston Street, Marylebone in London. We all enjoyed it. A year later Patrick was in a shop in Hong Kong as recognised the bottle. The shopkeeper immediately went up to him and told him what good taste he had, so out of guilt he bought it. The last was a bottle I bought and opened on the Millennium with Pat and my parents the morning after watching the firework display over the Thames on New Year’s Eve. That was before the 4 hour commute the 9 miles home to Croydon – the place was pandemonium. But I saw my mum look childlike as she watched the fireworks for those 20 delicious minutes on Embankment. The years peeled back as it took her back to Victory over Europe celebrations in 1945 when she stood as a child on the banks of the Thames.

So Faustino I is a marker in time. It was fitting that I drank it with all my family, being together for the first time in nearly 5 years. I look forward for the next time.

And finally as drink it is the style of Rioja I prefer – completely over the top oak, heaps of vanilla – a style I only like with this region, and no other. New Riojas are more fruit driven. They please the critics more, but not I. I like being taken to the place Faustino I takes me. And so do all of my family, Pat, Ann, mum & dad. There’s never an argument over this stuff.

And so we drank a glass each, maybe two, and in relative silence, appreciated every drop on offer.