Blame it on Rioja

Now that we are all saying “Joven” like we’re from Wisconsin, let’s take a look at what it means in Rioja.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that Joven, Spanish for ‘young,’ is not a technical term. It is not recognized officially by either the Consejo Regulador of DOCa Rioja or El Instituto Nacional de Denominación de Origen (INDO), Spain’s country-wide governing body on all matters relating to viticulture and winemaking.

But it is the most common colloquial term used for those Rioja wines aged in oak barrels for less than 12 months, including wines aged in no oak whatsoever before bottling. Why 12 months? Because that’s Rioja’s mandated minimum time a red wine must spend in barrel in order to receive a Crianza designation on its Consejo-authorized back label, or contraetiqueta.* ( The word ‘crianza’ literally means breeding’ or ‘rearing.’)  

Therefore, if you look at the back label of a Rioja that’s marketed as a Joven wine, you won’t actually see the word ‘Joven’ on it. It’ll simply say ‘Cosecha‘ (Spanish for ‘harvest’ but closer in actual usage to the English word, ‘vintage’), followed by the year of harvest.

As a side note—and at the risk of complicating matters even further—there are a number of  progressive Rioja bodegas, making rather more serious wine, who have chosen to opt out of the Consejo’s advanced designations (Crianza, Reserva, Gran Reserva), either because they find these terms too antiquated and/or because they simply believe their wines are ready younger; say, for example, because they are using all new French oak, which is quite powerful in how it interacts chemically with its contents, so powerfully that 12 months might be overkill.  

These new generation wines all carry the same basic contraetiqueta as Rioja Jovens, even though, to borrow a popular Spanish phrase, no tienen nada que ver con un Rioja Joven (they have nothing at all in common with Rioja Joven), in either price or quality.

There is one more distinction to keep in mind. Rioja insiders—particularly marketers, exporters, and accountants—will often subdivide Rioja wines into just two categories: Vinos de crianza, or ‘wines with (good) breeding,’ referring to wines with Crianza, Reserva, or Gran Reserva designations; and vinos sin crianza, which is to say, wines ‘without breeding,’ a category that encompasses all wines that carry DOCa Rioja’s simple ‘Cosecha’ contraetiqueta—in other words, humble, inexpensive Jovens and bank-breaking, ultra-modern blockbusters alike.

This bifurctaed, catch-all system of terminology used among the locals, which as we have seen, can sometimes be misleading, nevertheless says a lot about the region’s past and offers a glimpse into the aspirations of latter-day Rioja winemakers. That wines are divided into those with or without ‘breeding’ not only belies the fact that vestiges of Old Castile’s aristocratic past die hard, it also shows how big an impact the mid-19th century introduction of barrel aging—an innovation imported wholesale from France after that country’s vineyards were decimated by phylloxera—has had on the fortunes of Rioja.

As aging wine in barrels (and later, in bottles) is rather more expensive than simply bulk-fermenting and transporting young wine, most of which is consumed locally anyway, when a bodega that’s been in the bulk business for years announces the fact that they are now making vino de crianza, the act itself is something of a social statement.

*By law, Rioja Crianza must be aged for a total of 24 months minimum, legally marketable at the beginning of the wine’s third year after harvest. Of those 24 months, the wine has to be aged for a minimum of 12 months inside 228-liter bordelais-style oak barrels.