The “Rioja Vintage Menu” provides the consumer with the elements of judgment that he needs to know about the optimal time to consume the Rioja red wines aged in barrels and guidance on the general characteristics of each vintage. The recently published Letter includes the last 10 vintages of criados and all the previous ones classified as excellent and very good since the creation of the D.O. in 1925. Each vintage appears with the category or categories that are normally found on the market on the date of publication of the vintage chart, which will be renewed annually.

The corresponding evaluations of each vintage have been carried out taking as a technical basis the results of the II Phase of the Quality Plan applied by the Regulatory Council for the quality control of those in the commercialization phase and the individual evaluations carried out by the expert tasters who form part of the Appeals Committee. No hierarchical classification is established between the different vintages, but in a visually attractive way, the basic information is provided through pictograms to assess the moment of consumption of each vintage.

Vintages