Rioja, the region most people name first when they think of quality Spanish wine, did not legally authorize Chardonnay for use in Rioja-labeled wine until 2007, the first change to its permitted grape list since 1925. Even then, the reform let Chardonnay in only as a minority partner: it cannot be the predominant grape in the finished wine, and if a Rioja label lists its varieties, one of Rioja’s own native white grapes has to be named first. Navarra, the region directly to Rioja’s east, had already released a single-varietal, barrel-fermented Chardonnay that went on to score up to 99 points from Spain’s Guía Peñín, fourteen years earlier, in 1993.
This matters because the standard story about Chardonnay in Spain treats it as a generic 1980s import, something “several regions started planting” without much distinction between them. That framing erases a real gap. Navarra did not simply plant Chardonnay alongside everyone else. The regional government built a dedicated public research institute in 1981 with the specific job of legitimizing international grapes for quality wine, rewrote its own denominación de origen rulebook around what that institute learned, and had a nationally and internationally recognized Chardonnay in bottle more than a decade before Rioja would let the same grape onto a label at all.
This account draws on the regulatory records of both DO Navarra and DOCa Rioja, the municipal record kept by the Ayuntamiento de Olite and the Gran Enciclopedia de Navarra on the research institute at the center of the story, and Bodegas Chivite’s own documented production history, cross-checked against independent wine-trade sources rather than repeated from a single one.
A State Lab Built to Legalize Foreign Grapes
In 1981, the Government of Navarra created a public research body, first known as EVENSA and renamed EVENA (Estación de Viticultura y Enología de Navarra) in 1986, headquartered in Olite, the town at the center of the Ribera Alta sub-zone and once the seat of the medieval Kingdom of Navarra. EVENA was set up as a state-owned company with a specific mandate: applied research into grape growing and winemaking for the region, including systematic trials of varieties well outside Navarra’s traditional Garnacha, Tempranillo, and Viura. In late 1985 the institute bought the former Alcoholera San Isidro building in Olite to convert into a dedicated experimental winery, which opened on April 1, 1987. EVENA still operates today, running the quality-control tastings and analysis for DO Navarra’s regulatory board.
One of the people who built Navarra’s modern wine identity, Javier Ochoa of Bodegas Ochoa, spent more than a decade at EVENA’s helm before devoting himself to his family’s winery full time. His story, and the winery’s own research-driven track record recovering Navarra’s historic Moscatel de Grano Menudo, is documented in Encierro’s full account of Bodegas Ochoa. What that decade at EVENA produced for the region as a whole, not just for one winery, is the part that gets skipped over: a formal, government-funded testing ground for grapes no Navarra vineyard had grown at scale before.
DO Navarra Rewrites Its Own Rulebook
DO Navarra’s founding statutes date to 1933, drafted around the region’s traditional varieties and its long-standing reputation for rosado. Through the 1980s, in step with EVENA’s research, private wineries and cooperatives moved away from selling bulk wine and toward bottling and labeling quality wine under their own names, and the denomination’s statutes were updated to formally authorize a set of international varieties for the first time: Chardonnay for white wine, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot for red, alongside the traditional Tempranillo, Garnacha, and Viura.
That authorization holds today. DO Navarra’s currently registered white varieties, confirmed both by the regulatory board’s own listing and by Spain’s national agriculture ministry registration of the denomination, are Chardonnay, Garnacha Blanca, Malvasía, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Viura, and Sauvignon Blanc. Chardonnay is not a novelty grape squeezed in as an afterthought here. It has been a formally recognized, statute-protected part of DO Navarra’s identity since the same decade EVENA was doing its foundational research.
Chivite’s 1993 Chardonnay and the Fourteen-Year Gap With Rioja
Bodegas Julián Chivite, one of Navarra’s oldest wine families, launched its prestige Colección 125 range in 1985 to mark the 125th anniversary of the winery’s first export shipment. The first vintage of Colección 125 released as a single-varietal, barrel-fermented Chardonnay came in 1993, made from grapes off a single north-facing plot known as Las Mercedes, chosen for the slow, even ripening that lets Chardonnay hold onto acidity in a warm growing climate. That wine went on to be scored as high as 99 points by Spain’s own Guía Peñín and 93 points by Robert Parker’s team, and Julián Chivite is widely credited as a pioneer of barrel-fermented Chardonnay production in Spain. The full story of the winery behind it, including the ownership change its own published timeline leaves out, is covered in Encierro’s profile of Bodegas Chivite.
Set that 1993 date against Rioja’s own regulatory history and the gap becomes hard to miss. DOCa Rioja, Spain’s most prestigious wine appellation and Navarra’s neighbor to the west, did not add Chardonnay to its list of authorized grapes until 2007, in the first change to that list since 1925. The 2007 reform admitted Chardonnay only alongside Sauvignon Blanc and Verdejo, and only under a specific restriction still in force: none of the three “foreign” white varieties can be the predominant grape in a finished Rioja wine, and if a label names its varieties at all, one of Rioja’s own native whites, such as Viura or Malvasía, has to be listed first. Fourteen years after Navarra already had an internationally scored Chardonnay carrying its own name on the label, a bottle of Rioja legally still could not do the same.
Where to Find Navarra Chardonnay Today
Ribera Alta, the sub-zone built around Olite, is the part of DO Navarra most associated with Chardonnay today. Its warmer, drier growing season, roughly 350 to 500 millimeters of rain a year against wetter totals further north, gives the grape the ripening window it needs. Bodegas Ochoa and Bodega Inurrieta, both based in Ribera Alta, are established producers of it there, and Encierro’s broader look at the Navarra wine region places that zone’s Chardonnay in the context of the DO’s other four sub-zones. Pago de Cirsus, in the Ribera Baja sub-zone on the Bolandín estate, also bottles a varietal Chardonnay under the DO Navarra label. Chivite’s own vineyards for Colección 125 sit further north, in the Tierra Estella sub-zone.
For a visitor working through Pamplona’s bars and restaurant lists during fiesta, Navarra Chardonnay tends to show up as a fermentado en barrica style, oak-aged and fuller-bodied, rather than the light, unoaked version more common elsewhere. It is not the region’s best-known wine. That is still rosado, by a wide margin. But it is proof that a region known internationally for pink wine was, on paper, ahead of its far more famous neighbor when it came to legalizing and perfecting one of the world’s most planted white grapes.
FAQ
Is Chardonnay grown in Rioja?
Yes, but only since a 2007 reform, and only under restriction. DOCa Rioja’s regulatory board authorizes Chardonnay as one of three permitted “foreign” white varieties, alongside Sauvignon Blanc and Verdejo, but none of the three can be the predominant grape in a finished wine, and a native Rioja white variety must be listed first if grapes are named on the label.
When did Navarra start growing Chardonnay?
Navarra’s DO statutes were updated to formally authorize Chardonnay, along with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, during the 1980s, alongside the founding of EVENA in 1981, the regional government’s research institute for viticulture and winemaking. Bodegas Julián Chivite released the region’s first widely recognized single-varietal Chardonnay vintage in 1993.
What is Chivite Colección 125?
Colección 125 is Bodegas Julián Chivite’s prestige wine range, launched in 1985 to mark the 125th anniversary of the winery’s first export shipment. Its Chardonnay, first released as a single-varietal wine in 1993, has scored as high as 99 points from Spain’s Guía Peñín and is considered one of the country’s benchmark white wines.
What is EVENA?
EVENA, the Estación de Viticultura y Enología de Navarra, is the Navarra regional government’s own research institute for grape growing and winemaking, founded in 1981 and based in Olite. It ran the trials that helped legitimize Chardonnay and other international grape varieties for quality wine production in Navarra, years before neighboring regions like Rioja permitted the same grapes.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.