I have to start by saying that Rioja is possibly the most dynamic region in Spain at the moment. After all, it’s one of the largest and most important, so in a way, it’s logical. Wine is in constant change, and that is good. Rioja is one of the classic regions from the country, together with Jerez, and that’s for a reason: they have capabilities and potential to produce world-class wines. But being a large region also means that Rioja, being a recognized brand with commercial success, has the possibility to produce large quantities of wine. I’ve said it many times before: the places have the potential to produce quality, but you need people to do it, to realize that potential, to move it from the vineyard to the bottle.
Tom Puyaubert from Exopto is usually quite explicit when I ask him about what’s going on, and this year was no exception. “Where to start?,” he said. “What I see is a worrying picture for the region, but you could see it coming. … Some grapes were not picked in 2023 and left hanging on the vines; grape prices have plummeted; and I see an increasingly older and demotivated generation of growers, as the next generation does not want to work the vineyards. The region is at a crossroads, close to a turning point, but where is this crisis going to lead—to the uprooting of vineyards (possibly the oldest and best-quality ones…) bankruptcy of wineries, commercial follies, drop in quality…?”
Tom Puyaubert from Exopto often provides a good overview of what’s happening in Rioja.
It's not a nice summary, but I think it’s quite realistic, and as Puyaubert said, you could see it coming. Berberana, one of the large operators, declared bankruptcy, the Rioja group that represents many of the larger wineries seem to be struggling and losing some steam… But premium products continue selling well; it’s in the lower segments of the market where the struggle is. It was clear that the way to success had to be quality…
Starting this year, I will start covering all my regions every 12 months to provide more timely information rather than working in 16-month cycles, which has been the way I’ve been working until now. It means faster and with less time. I will be working with my selection of the finest addresses without forgetting the upcoming, novelties and discoveries. But that means that we’re also shifting a little bit more from volume to quality. Which has always been our way.
Normal Seems To Be Drought
Meanwhile, the weather doesn’t give growers a break. Vigneron Abel Mendoza and his wife Maite Fernández described quite well what is happening with the climate: "In recent years, we've experienced very irregular and changing weather, excess heat, episodes of drought and high temperatures, a very unequal distribution of rain and untimely incidents such as hail, frost or torrential rains. They are increasingly complicated vintages to which we will have to adapt, since climate change is here to stay." Enough said.
Indeed, recent years have been increasingly warm. It started with 2020; 2021 broke the tendency with a year like yesteryear, with snow and all. The 2022 have more color and tannin, coming from a more Mediterranean year, and 2023 was also quite warm and very dry. 2020, 2021 and 2022 represent over 75% of the wines included in this article, so I will focus on them. There are of course wines from vintages going back to 2004, as López de Heredia is releasing their Gran Reserva bottlings from that year, and even a handful of early releases from 2023.
2020, the year of COVID-19, was also a year of mildew and humidity and was very challenging for organic producers. It was a year of contrast; Roberto Oliván from Tentenublo told me it was his favorite vintage from the last few years. Others prefer to forget about it. The pandemic gave people more time to be in the vineyards, and some saw the mildew coming and won the battle against fungus.
Only 2021 gave producers a break; it was a cooler year, going to the character from decades ago, with snow and rain, but not without challenges, with hail in some places; so, many people lost a significant percentage of grapes. But overall, it’s a really good vintage, the best in recent years, more homogeneous, like a more complete version of 2018, certainly fresher than 2019. It represents the lion’s share of the wines I tasted, and from what I’ve seen, it’s a wonderful vintage. It was a year that provided good conditions for those who worked well in the vineyards, with rain in September that allowed for a longer cycle and good ripeness of the grapes, a staggered harvest when people could harvest each vineyard at the right time and obtain wines with purity, complexity and freshness. Of course, some grapes were picked too early and without perfect ripeness because some panicked with the rain. Yields were on the generous side, which means some got a rare combination of volume and quality. A bunch of top 2021s have not yet been released yet, so more are coming in future years. It’s going to be a vintage to follow over time.
2022 was very warm, a year of immediate wines, round, possibly for the short term. It was a better year for Graciano and Garnacha, while Tempranillo suffered more but behaved better in higher altitude zones like San Vicente or Ábalos. The summer was torrid and people were very worried. The short story is that the resulting wines are much better than expected. But more Mediterranean vintages mean Mediterranean varieties are going to behave better in years like this, which seems to be the tendency.
Garnacha is making amazing wines, like this Pancrudo from Gómez-Cruzado in Haro.
2023 was a very challenging year, warm and especially dry. The behavior was better in higher altitude places. There were some episodes of hail, and some are thinking about covering the vines with anti-hail nets, which I’ve never seen here. Some top wines might not be produced from that year. Certain people made comparisons with 2013, like a 2013 with heat…
Exciting Things Happening in Rioja
In my article “A Change of Paradigm? From Grand Marque to Grower?” from 2020, I detected a significant change that sparked that title. I think the tendency is accelerating and there’s no way back. Of course, we cannot expect new world-class producers every year, and change is slow in wine. People take time to get to know their vineyards, and experience and track record are important here. But it’s very exciting to see new projects appear, grow, improve and make better wines every year.
One of the fastest new projects has been Jose Gil, a young producer from a wine family in San Vicente de la Sonsierra, a village that seems more dynamic than the average. It might be partially thanks to a group called Martes of Wine, a pun on Masters of Wine, as they get together on Tuesdays (“Martes” means “Tuesday” in the Spanish language) to taste together. They taste wines from all over the world and help each other, sharing experience and even equipment, as they understand that together they can get further than on their own.
Jose Gil’s cellar under the Castle of San Vicente de la Sonsierra
Gil doesn't stop. The two wines La Canoca and El Bardallo move from single-vineyard wines to paraje, or lieu-dit, wines in the 2022 vintage, which increases the number of bottles to about 3,200 each. There's a new white that will be released after several years of fine-tuning the style they were looking for. There are new plots from La Canoca in 2023, places that he described as "incredible locations and soil qualities." And in 2024, he and his wife leased with the option to purchase 4.5 hectares of very old vineyards (80 and 120 years old) in different locations and on different soils in Labastida, including one hectare of white planted with different varieties. I tasted the 2021 and 2022 versions of the five reds they produce. The 2021s are superb, but the 2022s, which are a little juicier and more primary, are not far behind...
I loved the wines from Alegre-Valgañón, a small family project that deserves more recognition.
When I visited Rioja in 2022, I reported on a good number of these new growers, such as Abeica, Carlos Sánchez, Dominio del Challao, Elena Corzana, Juan Valdelana, Mauro, Víctor Ausejo… They are all on their way up, but the biggest progressions this year came from Jose Gil, Alegre Valgañón, Diego Magaña, Dominio del Challao, Carlos Sánchez and Víctor Ausejo. I always encourage you to browse the tasting notes and the comments on individual producers, as I try to include relevant information there and not just tasting notes. But some merit a highlight here too.
I also found a name I had never come across before: Álvaro Loza. He is a young grower with no family roots in wine. His day job is at Clos Ibai and he has started to produce a little bit of his own wine. He's very young (born 1995) and is also part of Martes of Wine. He works four small plots of vines, two each in Haro and Labastida, one hectare in total, and produces around 3,000 bottles.
I was very impressed with the new wines from Víctor Ausejo, a young grower that started in 2018 and is releasing his first reds (he started with Garnacha Blanca whites only), a varietal Garnacha and a Mazuelo/Cariñena. He's growing slowly and will produce 10,000 bottles of the 2023 vintage.
Carlos Sánchez has one of the most exciting young projects in Rioja, where he started in 2019 after years of experience making small quantities of wine in Gredos. His new winery is in Labastida, and the vines are in Labastida and San Vicente de la Sonsierra, small plots worked organically and biodynamically (but so far not certified), around 2.5 hectares from which he produces 8,000 bottles.
Some of the small growers have even started sharing names of lieu-dits, or parajes, like El Bardallo.
Since 2023, he has had his own winery, Domaine Canadell Sánchez, a joint venture with the French family Canadell Jayer. They will release a new range of wines from the 11 hectares of vines they have purchased in San Vicente and Labastida, while his personal project will also continue. Exciting things happening in Rioja!
Size Matters
Most of these producers are slowly replacing 225-liter barrels with larger ones: 400, 500 and 600 liters and even oak vats of different sizes, which was more the tradition before the Bordeaux influence made using smaller barrels more common. The 225-liter barrels are the ones mandatory to get the official categories of Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva, according to the amount of time wine has spent in them.
Using 225-liter barrels made with American oak has been the tradition for the last 100 years.
Some are now realizing that, with climate change, the higher alcohol and the more Mediterranean style of many wines and vintages, the wines feel more relaxed and less marked by the élevage in oak when they use larger volumes. Often the 225-liter containers compress the wines too much and tend to lend too many oak flavors, aromas and tannins to the wines.
The future seems to be larger barrels, oak foudres and oak vats too.
The more traditional wineries and wines, such as López de Heredia, Hermanos Peciña and the Gran Reserva bottlings from others, keep using 225-liter barrels (which is mandatory to obtain the category), and more often than not, they are well-seasoned and neutral ones, never new, and made of American oak. In some of these, the wines that spend a lot of time in barrel might get more influence from the microbiology of the cave than from the barrels themselves. This is the case of the wines from López de Heredia, especially the white Gran Reserva, which spends 10 years in barrique in their cellars, but also some of the longer-aging wines that I tasted from CVNE, especially whites (the Monopole Gran Reserva or the Corona Gran Reserva), which have aromas that remind you exactly of how it smells inside their cellars.
The Vineyards: Organic Is the Way and New Planting Is the New Old Vines
I’ve already mentioned the importance the Mediterranean varieties are going to have in the (warm) future. Viticulture is key. More and more people realize they have to focus on their vineyards. I see many converting them to organic farming (and some also biodynamic) or working toward the certification after years of working like that. Maybe there was the idea that the organic certification could be a plus, but I believe, in the medium and long term, it’s going to be a prerequisite for quality wines.
Organic and manual (even animal!) work in the vineyards
Organic farming means more manual work, more time required in the vineyard and therefore higher costs. We should understand that we all, as consumers, have to pay for that.
Farmers across Europe have started complaining, because they can hardly make a living, and that’s also happening in Spain and in Rioja. Wine is an agricultural product; we should not forget that! There was a massive demonstration in Logroño, the capital city of Rioja. Revindications are multiple, and mostly justified; we all depend on agriculture, livestock and fishing to live, and they are sectors that are badly mistreated. Jose Gil was seen with a banner that read: “10 hours in the vineyard, 40 hours in the computer,” complaining about the bureaucracy they suffer.
One other thing that seems to be changing (a little) is the perception of the old vines. Of course, old vines that are well-tended and pruned, farmed properly and in a very good place are wonderful and should be preserved. But age of the vine per se is not enough. More and more people are understanding that, to a point, place can be more important than vine age.
Old vines might be important, but the place can be even more important.
When I asked Bryan MacRobert of MacRobert & Canals what they were up to, he responded, "planting vineyards," which seems to be the next step for many young projects after recovering old vines. Others, like Alegre Valgañón and even more established names, like Palacios Remondo or CVNE, are also planting vineyards. And many are talking about the keyline system that follows contour lines to maximize water utilization (water and irrigation will be a discussion in the near future), and even planting mixed varieties … going back to the past!
The Regulations, They Are A-Changin’
The Rioja appellation introduced sparkling, village and single-vineyard wines seven years ago. It was a great move, but as usual, the devil was in the details… If you read the small print, it said that you needed to have the winery in the same village as the vines for a wine to get the village category. And there were other small (but very important) details. I was quite critical at the time, as you can read in my “Wind of Change” article from 2018. But it was a move, a first step. I discussed this with the appellation’s CEO, and as I explained, the answer (not blowin’ in the wind) was that they defined it like that, and “the market will tell us if it’s wrong.” Well, the market seems to have told them (but it took a long time…), as changes have recently been made to those regulations. Now, the winery does not need to be in the same village as the vines to be granted the village category. What matters is where you have the vines, not the brick and mortar…
The vineyards are not always in the same village as the winery…
I spoke to Pablo Franco, the appellation’s technical director, about it, and this is what he had to say: “It’s very difficult to get a consensus to make any changes here; it requires 150 out of 200 votes.” The Grupo Rioja, one of the main players in terms of volume, has changed its mind a little about the village wines. “The big change is that the current category changes its name from Vino de Municipio to Vino de Pueblo.”
But there is another option: Viñedo de Pueblo (meaning “village vineyard” rather than “village wine,” a subtle nuance), for which the vineyard has to be in the village but the winery can be elsewhere in the appellation. Both categories will have a common back label Vino de Pueblo. I think this is an advancement for those who want to be more specific about their wines but might not have a winery in each of the villages where they have vines, and it also allows the producers who want to keep the cosechero tradition of Rioja (having the winery and vineyards in the same village) to continue with it. Well done!
“I think it will also be a way to grow the category,” continued Franco. “The Vino de Municipio had reached its ceiling. Sales in 2022 were 1.81 million and in 2023 only 1.84 million. With this new option, many more wines would be included in the category, which will have a lot more room for growth.”
The new rules will also allow up to 15% of grapes or wine from outside the village. That was introduced because sometimes vineyards cross village borders.
Some old vineyards might have been saved by the Viñedos Singulares category, Pablo Franco said.
We talked a little bit about the single-vineyard category, Viñedos Singulares. It has saved some old vineyards that would have been grubbed up. Some young people are taking over some plots and have been able to preserve them, and that makes the category worth it. Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s something…
López de Heredia and Their 2004s
If you sort the wines in this article by score, you’ll find two wines from López de Heredia at the top of the hierarchy, and both are from the 2004 vintage. I had a wonderful tasting with sisters María José and Mercedes López de Heredia in their winery in Haro. I had previewed the exceptional 2004 Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva in my previous visit and was eager to see the other 2004s and the current releases.
María José (left) and Mercedes López de Heredia
Mercedes, who is in charge of winemaking and is the technical director, told me, "We are fighting very hard to not change anything. Before we were going against the flow, and now we are overwhelmed by demand."
It was amazing to taste their wines with them; they didn't stop talking the whole four hours it took us to go through the portfolio. "I've been experimenting with stuff to seal the vats and the barrels; I've mixed beeswax with oil, and I've invented a kind of plasticine with the bitartrates, but it's not fully waterproof. We used things that we cannot use anymore and we have to find alternatives. Everything is a challenge nowadays." The two sisters speak with passion about their traditions and what their grandfather and father did for the family winery. The wines have not changed even though they have to adapt to new regulations that prevent them from working exactly as was done in the past.
We talked about everything, including the “new” white varieties, (they have some experimental plantings). They are not very impressed by Tempranillo Blanco, saying, "It's not very aromatic and so far doesn't show the vibrancy of the old Viura. We have so little Maturana Blanca that we cannot vinify it separately, so we cannot tell you."
There was talk about vintages, and of course the recent harvest. "In 2023, we harvested in September, and it was extremely warm. For the first time, we didn't harvest in the afternoon, because it was too hot." For María José, 2016 was the last classical vintage in Rioja Alta, perhaps only 2021 after that. It's very much in the style of 2001. The wines from 2016 showed exceptionally well, but the show was stolen by the Gran Reserva bottlings from 2004; both wines from the Viña Tondonia deserve three-digit scores. The white is the freshest and most elegant I can remember, and it even felt young and undeveloped. The red grew in the glass and overtook the Viña Bosconia, which was open from the first minute. The Tondonia took time in the glass to reveal its true colors. They are exceptional wines in any case.
The next rosé will not be available until 2028 (from the 2018 vintage) because, as María José told me, “We didn’t have enough Garnacha to make the rosé after we used what we needed for the blends of the reds. So, we didn’t produce that wine between 2013 and 2017.” Which means there will be no rosé in the market between 2023 and 2027, as that wine is sold 10 years after the harvest. Remember there was also a hiatus for that wine between 2000 and 2008. The rosé has always been a rara avis, but now there’s huge demand for it… The three Gran Reserva (Tondonia and Bosconia red and Tondonia white) will be produced in 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2016 and 2021. “2019 was declared an excellent year, but not for us,” explained María José. “We didn´t make the rosé in 2019 either, but we produced it in 2020 and 2021.”
At López de Heredia, time seems to have stopped.
The New(er) Remelluri
There’s a huge change happening at Remelluri, the property of the Rodríguez family. From 2020 onward, there will be only the grand vin and the second wine in the Bordeaux sense, but it was still unnamed at the time of writing these lines. Those two wines plus the white and the Yjar, of course.
Telmo Rodríguez, from the Remelluri family, is often inspired by the past and old bottles.
They are getting where they wanted to be and their last (big) project at Remelluri, separating the exceptional from what’s not. The white led the way, perhaps ahead of its time. Years later, Yjar was the next step, trying to see if they convinced the fine wine world through La Place de Bordeaux, and it worked, kind of breaking the glass ceiling to reach world-class status.
2020 is the breakthrough year to show an exceptional property, getting away from being a brand to being a terroir wine. And they are reducing their output from 600,000 bottles to around 200,000. There will be some 80,000 to 90,000 bottled from the exceptional plots (50,000 in the first vintage) from the three valleys, the construction of a grand cru, and some 100,000 bottles (they have 97 hectares of vines there, 260 plots) of the second wine. Plus, there’s the white and the Yjar, which are both produced in very small volumes, around 13,000 bottles of each. So, there will be only four wines from the domaine. What about the surplus? Well, some wines are sold in bulk and some plots are even being grubbed up in search of excellence.
The downsizing of Remelluri has been driven by soil studies and years of vinifying their different plots separately.
Lindes de Remelluri is a separate négoce project, and it has more involvement in the production of the grapes. They are working with 25 families that produce the grapes from the different villages, not that they buy grapes (or wine) here and there. They are the same growers year after year. There is a domaine and a négoce (maison) side, like there is at Leroy or Roulot in Burgundy. I shall list them separately starting next year.
They consider that this is the beginning of a search of the great wine from Remelluri, the search for an exceptional vineyard, which was not the way the properties were planned in the beginning. They are also going to replant some plots (correcting density, rootstock…) and, exceptionally, maybe even plant completely new ones.
They constantly renovate the vineyards and also the facilities at Remelluri.
To be honest, this is what I was expecting from Remelluri since Telmo and Pablo returned in 2010. But I know that deep transformation of a project like that is not easy and takes time. It took them 10 years, but it’s already here. I’ve seen it elsewhere; it takes times to change the viticulture, the wines and the mentality of the team, to stop the inertia to keep going like before. It’s a herculean effort, and they have done it. Bravo! The wines are classical Rioja, serious, powerful but with balance, clean and expressive of the vintage, place and grapes, not following trends, looking for the essence of the place, searching for the Remelluri typicity, which cannot be light and fresh, not Burgundy or Galicia. It should be the expression of that corner of Rioja.
It took a while for Álvaro Palacios to make the transformation at his family winery, Palacios Remondo.
There is the vigneron movement, but what about the larger wineries? Marqués de Murrieta is really raising the bar, increasing the image and price of their wines, getting more recognition from international markets. Some others have also seen the way, Palacios Remondo for example, but it’s not easy to change the status quo. What they are doing at Remelluri could very well be the model to be followed by others. Quality over volume.
Luis Gutiérrez comes from an IT background with over two decades of experience working for a large multinational company in Madrid, sharing his free time between his family and wine. He lives in the Spanish capital with his family.
He's a founding member of elmundovino.com, the dean and most prestigious wine website published in Spanish, where he has written and tasted since its creation in the year 2000. He also writes for other publications belonging to the El Mundo newspaper in Spain as well as contributing to different wine and gastronomy publications in Spain, Portugal, Puerto Rico and the UK. Awarded the title Cavaleiro da Confraria do Vinho do Porto in 2004, Port and Douro are some of his favorite regions and wines, as he writes about what is happening in the wine world in Spain and Portugal, with occasional articles on Burgundy, Rhône, German Riesling, Champagne or other classic regions in Europe. He writes locally about foreign wines, and abroad mainly about Spanish wines.
Luis contributed to most of the Spanish entries for the 2008 book 1001 Wines You Must Try Before You Die 9 (in some countries, 1001 Wines You Must Taste Before you Die). He is also one of the co-authors of The Finest Wines of Rioja and Northwest Spain published in 2011 in the UK and US and in 2012 in Japan, which won the 2011 André Simon Special Commendation Award in London.
He's been the Spanish specialist correspondent for Jancisrobinson.com since May 2011 and received the Spanish National Gastronomy Award for journalism in November 2012 from the Spanish Minister for Tourism.
More than anything, he enjoys learning about wine, the wine people, and places, traveling, tasting, reading, writing, eating, and drinking and especially sharing great food and great bottles with friends whenever there's a good excuse for it!
Luis joined The Wine Advocate in 2013 as the reviewer for the wines from Spain, Argentina and Chile, and in late 2015, he took charge of reviewing wines from the tiny Jura in France.
His first major book, Los Nuevos Viñadores, covering all the major regions from Spain, its vineyards, landscapes and gastronomy, was published in Spain in the first half of 2017 by Planeta, the largest Spanish-language publisher in the world. Later that year, the book was launched in English under the name The New Vignerons, and in 2023, it was translated to Mandarin and launched in China. The book has sold more than 15,000 copies worldwide.
In 2022, he contributed to the book Calicata, Gredos como Terroir, a collective work with people like Josep Roca, Pedro Parra and Dani Landi.
In 2024, Luis expanded his coverage to include reviewing the wines from Portugal, a country that is close to his heart, while giving up his responsibilities over Argentina and Chile.
