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In a process of continuous improvement, DOCa Rioja is enriching its current offer with new indications alongside traditional barrel-ageing categories, its main bulwark.

 

From 2017, Rioja has wines that place the focus on their specific origin or terroir. The goal is to valorise a unique origin, to recognise its diversity and to continue setting strict requirements to assure the quality of its wines.

 

The new geographical indications respect and complement the traditional and successful range of blend-based wines and join the ageing categories that traditionally identify and give prestige to Rioja wines, offering unsurpassed, sustained quality to consumers across the world.

 

They will undoubtedly contribute both to valorising the terroir and recognising its diversity, but also to increasing the prestige of the wine region and enriching its goodwill.

Origins

Rioja has wines that place the focus on their specific origin or terroir. The goal is to valorise a unique origin, to recognise its diversity and to continue setting strict requirements to assure the quality of its wines.

WINES ACCORDING TO THEIR ORIGINS

Ageing

Depending on the traditional ageing process, Rioja wine can be put into one of four categories, identified by different numbered back labels or seals, which the Control Board issues to those wines that meet quality and tipicity requirements.

WINES ACCORDING TO THEIR AGEING

One of the distinguishing features of Rioja wines is their extraordinary ageing potential, something only found in great wines. Through an appropriate ageing process, in which oak wood plays a decisive role, Rioja wine undergoes a favourable evolution that brings out its virtues and confers new aromas and flavours.

 

Rioja wines have the elegance, originality and character of great wines, something that is only achievable when you have grape varieties, vineyards and winemaking procedures that have blended together over time. Given the diversity available in the wine region, it is a traditional practice for winemakers to blend different varieties of grapes from different terroirs and municipalities and their resulting wines, seeking complementary traits to set off their virtues in the final product.

 

This is undoubtedly the best known type of Rioja although, increasingly, wineries are offering a rich gamut of styles, with wines of great concentration and fruit expression, which are from specific vineyard plots.

Espumoso de calidad de Rioja

The DOCa Rioja has adapted its regulations to take advantage of a business opportunity and include a new type of wine: quality white and rosé sparkling wines.

This complements the range of still wines traditionally protected by the Designation (reds, rosés and whites) with a quality product of renown, obtained employing traditional methods and limiting in sugar content (Brut, Extra Brut and Brut Nature).

 

This new mention will be incorporated in the bottle back labels and seals issued by the Control Board and will be specifically reflected on the label as well. All the grape varieties authorised by Rioja Regulations may be used to make Espumoso de Rioja and, in the case of sparkling rosé wines, they must use at least 25% red grapes. The vintage application must be submitted prior to the beginning of harvest, which must be by hand and grape-to-wine ratio should be limited compared to that generally permitted.

 

Specific minimum times are given for this new category of quality sparkling wines:

A minimum of 15 months is required for the category of Crianza,  24 months for Reserva and 36 months for Gran Añada.