2024 Rioja & Spain Vintage

This is the honest position on 2024 in Rioja: the growing season is not documented in the sources available. The Consejo Regulador's official vintage page for 2024 publishes the classification and nothing else, with no account of winter or spring conditions, no flowering notes, no summer temperature or rainfall record, no harvest start and end dates, and no yield figure against the five-year average. Rather than fill that gap with inference, this article leaves it open. Two data points about the year do exist, and both come from growers talking about the following vintage. Rafa Usoz of Bodegas Sonsierra, in San Vicente de la Sonsierra in the Rioja Alta, said that the previous Rioja harvest, meaning 2024, had been historically small, and that 2025 picking dates in his area ran at around the same time as 2024's. Josep Sabarich, chief winemaker at Familia Torres, placed 2024 below 2025 in quality across all Spanish appellations. Those two statements are the extent of what can be said with attribution. When the Consejo or another primary source publishes a fuller 2024 technical account, this section is the one to rebuild.

• Winter and spring conditions: not published in the available sources
• Flowering: not documented
• Summer heat and rainfall: not documented
• Harvest start and end dates: not published; the only timing reference is that 2025 picking in Rioja Alta ran at around the same dates as 2024
• Yields: described as historically small by Rafa Usoz of Bodegas Sonsierra, with no official hectolitre or kilogram figure on the record here
• Official rating: Good, per the Consejo Regulador of DOCa Rioja

The Consejo Regulador rates each Rioja vintage after blind tasting, and publishes the result on its vintage register. Good is a positive classification, but in recent context it stands out as the lower mark in a strong run. The Consejo's own register shows Very Good for 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, and Excellent for 2019. The vintage that followed 2024, the centenary 2025, was rated Excellent after the evaluation of 2,176 samples. Set against those neighbours, 2024's Good is the clearest signal available about how the Consejo assessed the year.

• 2019: Excellent
• 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023: Very Good
• 2024: Good
• 2025: Excellent

One documented development around the 2024 vintage year is editorial rather than viticultural. The Consejo Regulador announced the release of Decanter's Rioja 2024 guide, a project that relied in part on European Union funding. The guide was edited by guest editors Sarah Jane Evans MW and Pedro Ballesteros Torres MW and included panel tastings of vinedos singulares and white Rioja, a regional profile of Rioja Alavesa by David Williams, a vintage spotlight on 2014 and 2004 by Ballesteros Torres, and a Rioja vintage guide covering 2000 to 2022. Note what that last item implies: the guide's own vintage coverage stopped at 2022, which is consistent with how little published assessment of the 2024 wines themselves was available at the time.

• Decanter's Rioja 2024 guide was announced by the Consejo Regulador and relied in part on European Union funding
• Guest editors were Sarah Jane Evans MW and Pedro Ballesteros Torres MW
• Content included panel tastings of vinedos singulares and white Rioja, and a regional profile of Rioja Alavesa
• The guide's own vintage reference section covered 2000 to 2022, not the 2024 wines