RIOJA 1990S: A VINTAGE GUIDE
The 1990s was probably the most exciting time in Spain’s recent history. The country began the decade lagging behind the rest of Western Europe, still traumatised by the memory of dictatorship, but finished it with modern infrastructures, easier access to world markets and lots of self-confidence.
It was also the period in which Rioja’s finest wine producers initiated the transition from branded wines to a more diverse proposal, including individual high-profile terroir wines. Investment in that period was huge; many new wineries were born during those years, fuelled by a then buoyant domestic market and increasing exports of fine wine.
Investments resulted in modern new wineries, the world’s largest programme of barrique investment (in 1990 Rioja wineries had a stock of half a million barriques, many of them old; 10 years later there were one million, far newer, barriques) and a massive replanting scheme. This favoured Tempranillo in vertical shoot positioned (VSP) trellising over Garnacha and Viura in bush vines. As a result, production grew enormously, from 160 million kg in 1990 to 300m kg in 2000.
Nature was particularly helpful, giving three of the greatest vintages in Rioja in half a century: 1994, 1995 and 1996. After the amazing 1964 – with the debatable exceptions
