RIOJA 2O13 IS JUST “GOOD”

AFTER SEVERAL YEARS of outstanding harvests, Rioja has been brought back down to earth with the 2O13 vintage.  A difficult growing season last year culminated in the Rioja DOCa council describing the vintage as “good”, the worst official rating for a decade.  Each of the Rioja DOCa vintages since 2OO4 inclusive has been rated as either “very good” or “excellent”.  But the appellation’s ruling council has graded 2O13 as just good – a return to 2OO3 levels.  There are two rungs, “satisfactory” and “average”, that are worse on the council’s scale.  No vintage has dropped as low as “satisfactory” since 1984, while one must go back to 1972 to find an “average” rating, according to the council’s vintage chart.  “The 2O13 vintage growing cycle had weather patterns that were quite different to those of previous years,” said the DOCa council.  “Heavy spring rains and low temperatures delayed the growing season and resulted in uneven ripening.”  Good weather in September and October was largely credited with saving the vintage, allowing for a staggered harvest that enabled grapes to achieve ripeness.  “With such a demanding growing season, Rioja growers had to make full use of their expertise,”  l.  The rating system is subject to exhaustive tests on each tank of wine in each winery and that pass criteria has become stricter in recent years.  It added that 1O3 out of 3973 samples failed analytical or sensory tests for DOCa quality.  Nearly 264 million liters of Rioja DOCa wine has been produced from a 2O13 crop of 368 million kilograms of grapes.  Production is up 4% versus 2O12.