Every year, the Decanter World Wine Awards puts close to 19,000 wines through blind tasting by some of the most respected palates in the industry. Most years, only a small handful ever reach the very top tier. This year, one of them is sitting in our warehouse in Dublin, and it costs less than €25 a bottle.
Cerro Añón Crianza Rioja, from the historic Bodegas Olarra, has just been named a Top Value Gold winner at the Decanter World Wine Awards 2026, one of only 35 wines worldwide to earn the distinction. If you haven't come across the category before, it's worth understanding exactly what that means, because it's rarer, and more useful to you as a buyer, than most wine awards out there.
What Is Decanter Top Value Gold, and Why Does It Matter?
Top Value Gold is not a separate medal you can enter your wine for. It's a shortlist drawn up after judging is complete, when Decanter's co-chairs go back through every single Gold medal winner (wines scoring 95 or 96 points) and pick out the ones that also deliver outstanding value for money. For 2026, that meant selecting just 35 wines from the entire competition, up slightly from 30 the year before, each one required to retail under £15 a bottle.
In other words, this isn't just a wine that scored well. It's a wine that scored at Gold medal level and was independently judged to be genuinely worth its price tag, chosen by people who taste thousands of wines a year for a living. For supermarkets, merchants and importers, the Top Value Gold list has become something of a buying guide in its own right. For you, it's a shortcut to a bottle you can trust without needing to be a Rioja expert.
The Producer: Bodegas Olarra, Rioja's "Grand Cathedral"
Cerro Añón Crianza comes from Bodegas Olarra, founded in 1973 on the outskirts of Logroño. The winery is instantly recognisable for its striking Y-shaped building, designed by architect Antonio Ridruejo, which earned it the nickname the Grand Cathedral of Rioja. It's a fitting name for a producer that has spent five decades building a reputation for consistency and quality at every level of its range.
The fruit for this Crianza comes mostly from Olarra's own vineyards in Rioja Alavesa, with additional grapes from Rioja Alta, off vines averaging around 20 years old. The vineyards sit on the limestone and clay soils typical of northwest Rioja, and the 2023 harvest, picked in mid-September, came in fully healthy and ripe.
Inside the Bottle: Blend, Winemaking and Tasting Notes
Cerro Añón Crianza is a blend of 95% Tempranillo and 5% Mazuelo. After a 15 to 16 day maceration with daily pumping over in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats, a third of the wine completes malolactic fermentation in new 225-litre French and American oak casks, while the remaining two thirds ferment in concrete tanks. From there, the wine spends fourteen to fifteen months ageing in oak, 80% American wood, with barrels ranging from brand new to seven years old, before resting in bottle for a further seven months prior to release.
The result is a deep purple-red Rioja with crisp raspberry aromas on the nose. On the palate, that same bright fruit character carries through, layered with spice, a firm but velvety texture, and a long, clean finish. It's approachable enough to open tonight, with enough structure to reward a little patience if you'd rather tuck a few bottles away.
What to Drink It With
Cerro Añón Crianza is built for the table. Its spice and grip make it a natural match for goat cheese, beef, lamb or veal, anything with enough richness and savoury depth to stand up to a wine of this character. It works equally well for a straightforward midweek dinner or a more considered Sunday roast.
Why This Matters for Irish Wine Drinkers
Rioja Crianza is one of the most reliable categories in the Spanish wine world, but reliability and genuine excellence don't always go hand in hand. A Top Value Gold win tells you this bottle has cleared a much higher bar than most wines at its price point, verified by one of the most rigorous judging panels in the industry, not by marketing copy.
