Wehad high expectations of this tasting. It is well known that great Rioja shows its full potential after extended ageing in the bottle, and 2004 and 2005 are both excellent vintages.
The 2004 vintage is the more irregular of the two. It was the last late vintage (from the following year onwards all good vintages have been quite early, likely due to climate change), and some areas performed much better than others. Fruit selection and good vineyard siting were crucial factors, but those who worked well got top wines.
The 2005 vintage was easier – practically perfect in terms of ripeness and grape health, with no botrytis. Yields and total quantities were similar for both vintages. You would therefore expect to see a higher number of 2005s at the top in this tasting, but it was not the case. With four Outstanding wines apiece, both vintages performed very well.
Turning to drinkability, the best wines from these vintages should be starting to open up and show extra complexity only now, while those that are not up to the challenge of time will be showing signs of decline. Some wines will be at their peak now, whereas others should be giving good indications of their capacity to improve further with extended ageing.
Having been lucky enough to taste many very old Riojas (see ‘Built to last’, p26), I would bet on some wines from these vintages still drinking well for many more years, a few beyond my lifetime. These two vintages came at a time when producers were ready to reach top quality in the vineyard and in the bodega, but the wines were released during a difficult period, most of them between 2009 and 2014, when the financial crisis was hitting hard. Prices for some of them have since increased, and should climb higher with time – providing good opportunities for investment.
MODERN VS TRADITIONAL
This panel tasting was also an interesting exercise in checking which of the mainstream styles would get the upper hand in the long run. Would the classic, long-ageing gran reserva wines get better overall results than the so-called modern-style Riojas, which tend to have shorter oak ageing and greater fruit intensity?
I can report that both styles did very well. They are developing in different ways – the
