Modern vs traditional rioja

If you look at a bottle of "modern" rioja, you will see that some producers incorporate a splash of cab, or merlot into the blend.  to see if modren beats out traditional,  I am making 2 rioja blends...the first being traditional blend, the second being the modern adaptation.  The traditional blend is 60% tempranillo, 20% grenache noir, 20% carignan.  The second one swaps ut the grenache noir for merlot.  which one wins?  Stay tuned, we will be posting some tasting notes as they becpme available!