Winemaking in Rioja traces back to the Phoenicians and Celtiberians. The earliest written record of grapes in the region dates to 873, a notarial document from San Millan dealing with a monastery donation. Throughout the medieval period, monks were the primary winemakers, and vineyards became a fixture of the landscape during the High Middle Ages. By the thirteenth century, the poet Gonzalo de Berceo, a clergyman at the Suso Monastery in San Millan de la Cogolla and Spain's earliest known poet, was already writing about the local wine. In 1102, the King of Navarra and Aragon granted Rioja wine its first legal recognition. Commercial exports began by the late 1200s.

Rioja is divided into three sub-regions, each with a distinct personality. Rioja Alta, on the western edge at higher elevations, produces lighter wines with bright fruit flavors and an old-world sensibility. Rioja Alavesa, in the Basque province of Alava on the northern bank of the Ebro, shares a similar climate but yields wines with fuller body and higher acidity. Rioja Oriental, formerly called Rioja Baja, is the warmest and driest zone, influenced by the Mediterranean rather than the continental climate that shapes the other two. Summer temperatures here reach 35 degrees Celsius, and irrigation has been permitted since the late 1990s to manage drought. Many traditional Riojas blend fruit from all three zones, though single-zone wines are slowly gaining ground.

Tempranillo dominates Rioja, accounting for nearly 88 percent of red grape plantings. Garnacha, Mazuelo, Graciano, and the recently recovered Maturana tinta round out the red varieties. Among whites, Viura leads at 69 percent, but Tempranillo blanco, a natural mutation discovered in the region, has been growing rapidly and now represents over 12 percent of white plantings. The grape harvest is done manually each October, with yields restricted to 6,500 kilograms per hectare for reds to ensure quality. Red grapes account for over 90 percent of the total cultivated area.

What distinguishes Rioja from most wine regions is its relationship with oak. Bordeaux-influenced winemakers introduced oak aging in the early eighteenth century, and the pronounced vanilla flavors became a trademark. Wines age in 225-liter barrels, originally French oak, then increasingly American oak as costs rose. Bodegas would hand-split American oak planks and season them outdoors to mimic French methods. The classification system revolves around aging: Crianza requires a minimum of two years including one in barrel, Reserva demands three years with twelve months in oak, and Gran Reserva calls for at least two years in barrel followed by three in bottle. The Marques de Murrieta once released its 1942 gran reserva in 1983, after 41 years of aging. Today most bodegas focus on wines ready to drink sooner, but the tradition of patient aging endures.

In 2018, the Regulating Council introduced new classification rules modeled on Burgundy, allowing labels to display village or municipality of origin and recognizing singular vineyard sites. The shift moved Rioja from a system focused primarily on aging toward one that also honors terroir. It was the latest evolution in a regulatory tradition dating to 1926, when the Consejo Regulador was first created to control the use of the Rioja name. From Phoenician-era roots to twenty-first-century terroir mapping, Rioja has reinvented itself across the centuries while keeping what matters most: the vine, the soil, and the patience to let them speak.