Wines of the Year 2024: Spain & Portugal

Decanter’s expert writers and contributors awarded 95-points or more to almost 3,000 wines in the 12 months to October 2024.

While they have all appeared in the pages of Decanter magazine and online on Decanter Premium and in our decanter.com database, there were too many to reproduce here for a seasonal wrap-up.

So, in a somewhat unfair and very challenging task, we asked each of our Regional Editors to select just five wines from each of their key areas of expertise to highlight the bounty and diversity on offer across the world wine map.

Scroll down for notes and scores of the Spanish and Portuguese Wines of the Year 2024

Rioja

I’m sometimes asked whether Rioja still deserves all the attention it gets. My reply is that it does – and perhaps more than ever.

Producers in Rioja are leveraging tensions and challenges to their creative advantage, rethinking tradition and reconsidering what makes Rioja what it is – all of which have allowed it to become a stage for evolution, experimentation and adaptation.

Ultimately, this means that Rioja is producing wines with more character, more terroir expressiveness and – importantly – a greater sense of fun.

The increasing diversity and quality of white and rosé wines is perhaps the most obvious outcome of this interesting (maybe pivotal) moment in Rioja’s history.

That only two of the five wines selected here are reds might come as a surprise for many – although not to those who have followed the region (and Decanter) throughout 2024.

Abel Mendoza’s Viura and Remírez de Ganuza’s Olagar show why white Rioja is carving out its place alongside white Burgundy, while López de Haro’s Rosado shows that it’s possible for a wine to be elegant while also being utterly delicious.

But there’s also a lot happening on the red front in Rioja, with ever more character in site-specific wines (Artuke’s La Condenada) and daring explorations of fruit purity, as found in Ramón Bilbao’s concrete-fermented and long-aged (100 months) Garnacha.

Portugal and Spain beyond Rioja

With one of the world’s highest concentrations of indigenous grape varieties and some of the longest uninterrupted winemaking traditions, Spain and Portugal share a viticultural and oenological wealth that has come to the forefront in recent decades, stirred by vibrant communities of winemakers.

It’s therefore both difficult and unfair to single out only five wines from the Iberian peninsula beyond Rioja…

But there’s something all the wines here have in common: a relaxed classicism that marries winemaking skill with a focus on the underlying quality of the grapes. That’s what will always make the delightful florality of Quinta de Vargellas so recognisable upon the first sniff.

There’s also another common thread: a quiet yet assertive militantism. These are wines and producers that stand their ground, daring to set new benchmarks for sometimes overlooked, misunderstood regions, grapes and styles.

This explains why Anselmo Mendes’ red Vinho Verde is as relevant as it is elegant; why Filipa Pato and William Wouters are rewriting the textbook entries for Baga and Bical; why Magna Vides will force you to reconsider Ribera del Duero; and why Recaredo continues to fly the flag for the superb quality and sense of place of Spain’s traditional-method sparkling.

Here’s to another year of Spanish and Portuguese wines that defy expectations and reshape the geography of Europe’s best wines.

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Wines of the Year 2024: Spain & Portugal

Wines are listed sparkling, white, red then fortified, in score order

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