How can one tell the age of a rioja wine?

Basically, the age of a wine is revealed by its colour. As has been stated before, all wines have a common colour - yellow; rosés and reds also have a red component.

With maturation, the yellow component increases and whites become golden. A white must obtained from slight pressure produces pale wine. The scale of years and colour is as follows:

• First year: pale.
• Second year: straw-coloured.
• Third year: golden.
• Fourth year: very golden.
• Fifth year: maderised colour.

Colour, therefore, gives us an idea of age. However there are important secondary aspects in aroma and on the palate. Wine in the first year, in addition to having a pale colour, smells of grapes. If it is very young, it should feel "petillant" on the tip of the tongue, as it still contains carbon dioxide gas.

With respect to rosés, the colour of these wines evolves in a special way: The red decreases with time and the yellow increases.

• First year: pink.
• Second year: "onion skin".
• Third year: "oil-like".

The aroma of young rosés is also very fruity and produces the same "petillant" sensation due to the presence of CO2 gas.

Reds offer more difficulties. Although the red colour decreases over the years and the yellow increases, with maturation over a great number of years the difficulty is greater than estimating the age of whites and rosés. It is necessary to include the concept of the vintage.

Should all vintages be the same, we would see a clear, gradual decrease in red and increase in yellow over a period of one to twenty years. It would be simple in this case for a winetaster to estimate the age of a red wine. The difficulty arises from an increase in colour from the oxidation of the yellow components being different in each vintage. Simultaneously, the decrease in the red colour does not occur at the same speed in red wines from different years. For example, a wine of the 1981 vintage today (in 1990) has a younger colour than one of 1982. In these cases, it is necessary, when winetasting, to have a chart of Rioja vintages. By relating the impression of colour, palate and aroma to the official classification, we can form our judgement of the vintage. The following may be used as a general guideline:

• First year: purple.
• Second year: red.
• Third year: ruby red.
• Fourth year: yellowish red.