Rioja Tapas Fantasticas, London

Last weekend, on a nice grey day in London I headed to the Rioja Festival on the Southbank. The best Tapas and Rioja all in one place without having to jet off to Spain? Heaven. For £3.50 you got 4 tokens to sample wines, then you paid extra for the tapas. As much as I would have loved to try all the food - and there were some amazing looking pinxos - our budget did not extend that far unfortunately! 

I tried to keep track of all the Rioja we tried but in the end there were far too many! I love a strong hearty red so I tended to try Reserva or Gran Reserva. Here are some of the snaps I managed to take. 

Chorizo a la Sidre - succulent and bursting with flavour - definitely trying this at home!

Calamares from El Cantara - delicious but for £4.50 could have done with a few more!!

We ended up buying 2 bottles of the Taron Reserva - delicious and not bad at the price of £10 per bottle. 

It was a great event and it was interesting to see how many restaurants there are in London that I haven't heard of or been to before. I think they'll definitely be worth a try. If you want a full listing of all the restaurants and bodegas that were at the event click here.

More than anything else this has made me excited for my holiday to Spain later this summer! I'll certainly be filling my glass with as much rioja as possible.