I remember my first experience with a homegrown Tempranillo - a bottle from Oregon, and as it turns out, one that's essential to the grape's legacy on these shores. For a special dinner, a friend opened the Abacela Reserve Tempranillo, grown by Earl and Hilda Jones in Roseburg, Ore.

"Opened" is not totally accurate. The bottle had been uncorked two days prior in hopes of taming a bit of a growler. It was still brooding, appealing in the way the thickest-armed Rioja Riservas can be. Good thing we were having beef.

Curiously, for a grape considered a benchmark of ...