According to the preliminary report on the 2017 harvest, the Regulatory Council of the DOCa Rioja estimates total production at around 349 million kg of grapes. According to the council, the results have been very satisfactory in terms of the quality of the wines produced, for which a selective harvest throughout the entire territory of the appellation proved to be key.
The final harvest yield—from what will be the earliest harvest in Rioja’s history—reflects that 2017 was a year marked primarily by very complex weather conditions. Initial impressions regarding the quality of the wines produced from the 2017 vintage are very optimistic, as “the first grape samples reveal superb aromas, with adequate structure, color, and polyphenols,” stated Pablo Franco. The vineyard’s healthy growth and impeccable plant health were fundamental to achieving these results, in addition to the significant effort made by winegrowers, wineries, and a team of nearly 200 technicians and harvest assistants from the Regulatory Council.
It will be the evaluation of all the wines through analytical testing and tasting—which the Regulatory Council will begin shortly—that will allow for an accurate assessment of the final quality of each individual winery’s wines and of the vintage as a whole.
Faced with a situation as exceptional as that caused by the severe frost on April 28, the Plenary Session of the Regulatory Council adopted, for the first time, extraordinary measures tailored to current production conditions with the aim of providing the technical solution best suited to the public interest. The Campaign Regulations were approved by a broad consensus last July based on exhaustive work by the Technical Services, which involved the use of state-of-the-art computer technologies and an unprecedented series of field inspections in the Designation since last April. For the first time in history, the extent of frost damage to the vineyards was assessed on a vineyard-by-vineyard basis, resulting in the establishment of three levels of maximum yields based on that damage.
