1987 Rioja & Spain Vintage

The 1987 growing season in Rioja presented a classic test of nerve and timing. The harvest in Rioja Baja started early in September but was interrupted by rain, splitting producers into those who picked too soon and those who waited. A hot end of September dried out the vineyards, preventing the botrytis that might have ruined late-hanging fruit. The result was a split vintage: cooperative-level and early-picked wines were lean and struggled to age, while the patient second harvest yielded healthy, ripe, and surprisingly concentrated grapes.

• Harvest in Rioja Baja began around September 5 but was quickly interrupted by rainfall
• Hot late-September conditions followed the rains, halting any botrytis development and allowing further ripening
• Growers who waited for the post-rain window were rewarded with fully ripe, healthy fruit
• The vintage rewarded careful selection and site-specific decisions more than almost any other year of the decade

Rioja Alavesa emerged as the clear winner of the 1987 vintage. Its higher elevations and later-ripening sites were precisely the areas that benefited most from the patience strategy: the highest and latest-picked vineyards gave the best grapes. Rioja Alta also performed well, particularly around Haro where producers like López de Heredia and Muga had the experience and resources to wait out the rains. Rioja Baja, with its warmer, lower-altitude sites and earlier harvest pressure, produced the vintage's weakest results.

• Rioja Alavesa: highest-altitude, latest-harvested sites produced the vintage's most elegant and age-worthy reds
• Rioja Alta (Haro cluster): López de Heredia, CVNE, and Muga leveraged deep experience to time harvests correctly
• Rioja Baja: warmest zone with most pressure to pick early; suffered most from the rain interruption
• White Rioja: Viura-based blancos from cool hillside sites showed freshness and unexpected longevity

The wines that defined 1987 came from the bodegas with the discipline to wait and the vineyards at altitude to benefit from the late-season recovery. Marqués de Murrieta's Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial, produced only in selected vintages from La Plana, a 40-hectare vineyard planted in 1950 at 485 metres on the 300-hectare Ygay Estate in Rioja Alta, earned 94 Falstaff points in a 2019 assessment. López de Heredia's 1987 Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva was released true to the bodega's tradition of extended aging; the Tondonia vineyard, over 100 hectares on the right bank of the Ebro with alluvial clay and limestone soils, was perfectly suited to the vintage's structure. CVNE Imperial Gran Reserva 1987, a wine only produced in years CVNE classifies as Excellent and first made in the 1920s, scored 92/100 in aggregated critic scores.

• Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial 1987 (Marqués de Murrieta): 94 points Falstaff (2019); blend of Tempranillo and Mazuelo from the 40-hectare La Plana vineyard at 485 metres in Rioja Alta
• Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva 1987 (López de Heredia): 92/100 aggregated score; sourced from 100+ hectares of clay-limestone soils on the Ebro's right bank in Haro; released well after harvest per bodega tradition
• Imperial Gran Reserva 1987 (CVNE): 92/100 aggregated score; first produced in the 1920s and only released in vintages CVNE classifies as Excellent
• Prado Enea Gran Reserva 1987 (Muga): minimum 36 months in oak (mostly French) then 36 months in bottle; described as 'elegant, mature, but lean' by Parker and 'harmonious and complete' by tasters around its 30th year

Any 1987 Rioja still in circulation in 2025 is firmly in its tertiary phase. Community tastings of Muga Prado Enea from 2019 described it as fully fruity, plush, and harmonious at roughly 32 years old, suggesting that top Gran Reservas hit their sweet spot somewhere around 30 to 35 years from vintage. The CVNE Imperial Gran Reserva and Castillo Ygay examples, rated in the low 90s by critics, likely offer similar timelines. Provenance is now paramount: bottles from ideal cellar conditions may still reward opening, while those with uncertain storage histories should be approached with realistic expectations.

• Top Gran Reservas (Castillo Ygay, Imperial, Prado Enea, Viña Tondonia): peak drinking likely 2010 to 2025 for well-stored examples; finest bottles may still be holding
• Provenance is critical at this age: low fills, poor storage, or damaged corks risk oxidation in any surviving 1987
• Serve at 16 to 17 degrees Celsius; decant gently for 20 to 30 minutes to allow tertiary aromas to open without dissipating
• Standard Crianza and Reserva bottlings from 1987 are almost certainly past their best and should be consumed only with low expectations unless storage was pristine

The 1987 vintage arrived four years before Rioja earned Spain's first Denominación de Origen Calificada status in 1991, a regulatory milestone that formalized what producers like Marqués de Murrieta (founded 1852), López de Heredia, and CVNE had been building for generations. Understanding 1987 helps students grasp a key tension in Rioja: the divide between growers who harvested early to avoid rain risk and those with the confidence, cellaring capacity, and elevated sites to wait. It also illustrates why Rioja Alavesa, with its higher altitudes and later ripening, consistently outperforms in challenging cool or interrupted-harvest years. For exam candidates, 1987 is a useful case study in harvest timing, subregional differentiation, and the role of traditional extended aging in preserving wines through difficult vintages.

• The 1987 vintage predates Rioja's DOCa designation by four years; Rioja became Spain's first DOCa in 1991
• Demonstrates the importance of subregional altitude in Rioja: Alavesa's higher sites proved decisive in this rain-split harvest
• Illustrates the value of extended aging in the traditional style: wines with long barrel and bottle time absorbed the vintage's structural challenges over time
• Pedagogically useful for contrasting patient, traditional producers (López de Heredia, CVNE, Marqués de Murrieta) against early-picking cooperatives in a marginal harvest