As testament to this, I tasted blind 266 premium wines at the HQ of the Rioja Council over the course of a week to form The Rioja Report 2024 for Club Oenologique. I would like to express my gratitude to the producers that sent their best wines for blind tasting. Álvaro Palacios, Roda, Marqués de Murrieta, CVNE and La Rioja Alta, to name a few, showed amazing courage and self-confidence. They do not need my scores but were willing to have their wines judged blind regardless. On the whole, the average quality level was really high. I tend to be mean in my scores compared to other colleagues but this year most of the wines received 90 points or more from me. To my mind, by 90 points I mean that this is a wine I would buy.

At the top level, I would distinguish two major ideological approaches. Many wineries adopt one or the other or even try to use both, according to their market niche and their background, but the ideas behind them are quite straightforward. The most classic approach is based upon brands: each brand has an identity of its own that is often recognisable when tasting blind. Wineries tend to buy grapes in the region, although there is a trend for wineries becoming large landowners. Brands made Rioja renowned in the 19^th century, thanks to Riscal, Murrieta, Viña Tondonia, La Rioja Alta, Martínez Lacuesta and many more.

The second approach is built upon origin, with wine quality justified as the result of exceptional vineyards. For these single-vineyard Riojas, individual production volumes are logically much lower. Some of the best wines by Contino, Telmo Rodríguez, Álvaro Palacios, the Eguren family and many others are benchmarks for such an approach. Both approaches are more intellectual than physical, and sometimes in blind tastings, it is difficult to define which of these philosophies the winery has adopted.

Then stylistically, in my view there are three major categories among Rioja’s top-tier red wines – again, with many wine styles in-between and plenty of nuances. First, there’s what I would call the ‘classics’: wines made with relevant oxidative development, silky, suave and bound for long lives. Most of the centennial brands and some others, such as Faustino, Urbina and Montecillo, represent this style.

Then, there are the ‘modern’ wines. Those wines were created at the end of the last century, when so-called Parkerisation and, much more importantly, improvements in viticulture and oenology resulted in fruitier, riper and more concentrated grapes, which was met with more careful, quite reductive, winemaking and the replacement of American oak by French oak, among other changes. Riojan wines in this style tend to be denser, more aromatic, higher in colour, alcohol and tannins. The best seem much younger than their actual years, and can gain great refinement after two or three decades.  Some wines by Muga, Remírez de Ganuza, Allende, Beronia, Lan and Roda are just a few examples of excellency in this style.

Finally, ‘post-modern’ wines are the result of a quest for finesse and delicacy. These wines tend to offer impressive aromatic expression, with little oak influence; they are very suave but with tightly knitted textures, deceptively moderate concentration and very slow, complex finishes. All of them are built upon particular vineyards, which are harvested early. The wines are made with extreme care so that they appear as ‘natural’ rather than ‘man-made’. Top single-vineyard wines by Palacios Remondo, Telmo Rodríguez, Riscal, Lalomba, Viña Real and Amaren are great examples.

When it comes to the white wines, their ageing potential is at least as great as that of the reds. The best, from Murrieta and Tondonia, have the amazing capacity to keep wonderfully for a century. I am sure that some of the newer white offerings from the likes of 200 Monges, Remírez de Ganuza, Allende and Remelluri will last for just as long.

As for top-tier Rioja rosé, there is a village called Cordovin, which would merit its own designation as top origin for Garnacha-based rosé wines. There are some other vineyards throughout Rioja with high potential for this type of wine. Many styles are being developed, from Gran Reserva wines to almost Provence-like wines. I do not believe that there will ever be one Rioja rosé style but instead an array of dissimilar approaches, to the advantage of adventurous wine lovers.

Palacios Remondo is a champion in The Rioja Wine Report 2024 for its single-vineyard wines. Its Quiñón de Valmira has developed into one of the most amazingly attractive and complex wines in the world. The ethereal finesse found in its first vintages is now supplemented by a firm structure. It’s a wine exploring new possibilities and it really is superb.

Two great classics are also champions: the incredible Ygay Gran Reserva by Murrieta and La Rioja Alta’s 890. These are two wines made in the vineyard and, very slowly, in the winery; wines made to hold the memory of our time for the next generation to enjoy.

Rioja is great, above all, because of the longevity of its best wines. Some relatively recent wineries, such as Allende, Vinícola Real (200 Monges) and Remírez de Ganuza, seem to have embedded those values from their very inception – for both their red and white wines. My admiration goes to Fernando Remírez de Ganuza, who passed away while I was writing these notes. We will miss him.

I finish with my overall champion from the Rioja Wine Report 2024: Muga. Its Selección Especial is impressively consistent, complex and expressive, with great fruit; it sets a benchmark for oak management. It’s a top wine in its own right and, being a wine that is made in the hundreds of thousands of bottles, a relatively affordable Rioja brand. It conveys the best possible introduction to this region’s greatness.