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!