Rioja vintage spotlight: 2014 and 2004

There’s no doubt that the best Riojas improve with cellaring. The idea behind this spotlight tasting, therefore, was to see how these wines were performing after 10 and 20 years. However, the comparison can’t be based on age alone: the vintage factor is crucial.

In this instance, the differences between the 2004 and 2014 vintages are striking. While 2004 is considered to be one of the greatest Rioja vintages of this century to date, some producers would rather forget 2014 altogether.

As Pablo Franco, technical director of the Consejo Regulador DOCa Rioja, diplomatically puts it: ‘2014 was a heterogeneous vintage, but hard work in the vineyards paid off spectacularly.’

Scroll down to see notes and scores for some selected wines from the two vintages

A perfect season

Everything that could go well went well in 2004, although the season got off to a gloomy start, with lots of rain and fear of disease in the vineyards. This was followed by perfectly sunny weather and well-nourished soils, though temperatures were, at the time, deemed a bit high (in light of climate change, 2004 temperatures would later come to be seen as ‘average’). Grapes were healthy and ripe, and young wines were delicious: balanced and fruity, with round tannins and relatively low pH – all the necessary conditions for ageing.

As a result, the 2004 vintage was generally viewed as ‘excellent’ by the experts. This rating applied across the three sub-regions, although Rioja Alavesa in particular benefited from the conditions and arguably Rioja Oriental less so, because temperatures there were particularly high.

It’s also worth noting that at the time there were fewer quality-minded wineries in Rioja Oriental, but the situation is different today.

A season to forget

Jump forward 10 years and 2014 was the opposite of 2004. It started well, after the rainy and cold 2013 (the last such vintage in Rioja to date), with plenty of water in the soils and good weather.

But then the season worsened considerably across the whole region, with some areas being hit particularly hard. Conditions were terrible in many vineyards, especially at harvest time, when the high rainfall led to botrytis.

Those growers who managed old vines undertook green harvesting, clearing and working the vineyards in a timely way so that they were ready to pick at the right time and could get healthy and ripe grapes.

Unfortunately, those producers with particularly high yields and less-careful viticulture practices suffered a lot, and subsequently had to make a number of corrections in the winery.

Winemaking shifts

Significantly, 2014 also marks a shift in attitudes towards winemaking in Rioja: 2014 was the last vintage for overripe wines. Since then, winemakers no longer boast that they are ‘the last to harvest’, as they had done previously.

While the switch to harvesting earlier has much to do with climate change, as well as a quest for finesse, the late rains that occurred in 2014 were definitely a catalyst for this change.

Despite the challenges, there were, however, a decent number of very good 2014 wines produced at the time of release, and there was no reason to discard the whole vintage. Indeed, I remember some wines achieved excellent scores back then.

It was therefore a useful vintage in at least one respect: it highlighted the differences between the best producers and the others.

Compare and contrast

With all this in mind, you might expect the 2014s to appear slightly younger than the 2004s, while the 2004s would be slightly more complex. However, the results of our tasting showed that this was not the case.

Over the years, the differences in quality potential become more and more evident. Based on the results of this tasting I would recommend keeping top 2004s for longer than 2014s – although the best of them, across both vintages, are highly enjoyable now.

In my opinion, 2004 is likely to enter the club of top Rioja vintages, alongside years such as 2001, 1964, 1929 and 1895. In that context, alongside these greats, 2014 is bound to be forgotten.

Wine lovers are well aware of vintage differences for Bordeaux and Burgundy, but tend to minimise the vintage effect in Rioja. This tasting proved that this notion is completely wrong – particularly for wines whose peak is often some decades ahead.

Indeed, the rule of ‘buy the greatest in poor vintages, buy the second greatest in the best vintages’ applies to Rioja as much as it does to the French regions.

How the tasting worked

The tasting was conducted blind. Each producer submitted samples from both 2004 and 2014, on the understanding that only one tasting note per producer would be published. Several producers had excellent wines in both vintages; practically all of them had a better wine in 2004 than in 2014.

As a result, the recommendations give priority to the best 2014s from a broad range of producers. The 2004s recommended are the best among those not selected for their 2014s. Note that all producers (except one, Carlos Serros) whose 2014 wines we selected got a higher mark for their 2004s.

Maturing well: vintage highlights from our tasting:

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