Rioja: sworn declaration for the 2026 vintage until November 30

The Regulatory Council of the Qualified Designation of Origin Rioja has published Circular Letter 8/2026, which sets November 30, 2026, as the deadline for submitting the sworn declaration of vintage production. The procedure is mandatory for all wineries registered under the designation and is detailed in the Official Gazette of La Rioja no. 211, dated November 2, 2026, in section III of other provisions and acts (reference BOR-A-20261102-III–4105, file 202610290125291, pages 18552 to 18554).

The letter, signed in Logroño on October 26, 2026, by the director of the Control Body, Alejandra Rubio Gil, is based on the General Certification Procedure PG-10 and establishes that the declaration must be submitted to the Regulatory Council itself “by November 30, 2026, inclusive.” The regulation affects the entire registry of production wineries of the designation, regardless of their size or legal form, including cooperative wineries.

Four documents and one electronic channel

The circular details the documentation that must accompany the harvest declaration:

• DI 0702-1: sworn declaration of production per facility, one for each facility existing in the production winery registry.
• DI 0705-1: summary sworn declaration of production per owner, mandatory when the owner has more than one facility.
• DI 0706-0 (Annex I): list of grape entries from each supplier, differentiating between red and white grapes and a specific entry for own grapes.
• DI 0704-0 (Annex II): detail of the sworn declaration of production for single vineyards, which is submitted on paper “in the same way as in previous campaigns.”

The first three are managed and submitted through Nimbus, the Regulatory Council’s system, and are generated automatically using data from the traceability module. The indicated path is traceability, first stage, processes and generation of production declarations; the owner code is completed automatically and the operator chooses the winery whose data they wish to export.

Test mode and final validation

The letter warns of a critical point in the procedure: Nimbus has the “Informative” checkbox checked by default, meaning the first document issued is only a test. The effective submission to the Regulatory Council only occurs after unchecking that box and clicking the “visto” (seen) validation button.

Once the declaration has been sent, no operations that affect it can be performed within the traceability module. For owners with several wineries, the summary declaration DI 0705-1 is only considered valid if it is issued after having formalized the DI 0702-1 for all of them; in practice, the one generated when declaring the last winery.

Lees, sections, and verifications

The declared data must match what is recorded in the self-control system of each winery. In the grapes section, a distinction is made between total own harvest, own harvest sold—with the quantity expressed in whole grape equivalent—and acquired harvest, such that the total results from adding the acquired and subtracting the sold from the own harvest. Regarding obtained products, production is reflected by wine types, deducting the lees, which in no case may be less than 2 percent.

Based on the information presented and that held by the Council regarding grapes delivered to the winery, the body will issue a report of wines obtained in each category: eligible, non-eligible, and distillation. The data must be entered as totals, without segmenting by eligible categories or by distillation.

The Authorized Inspector Service of the Regulatory Council is available to wineries to resolve doubts or incidents with user keys, via telephone at 941 500400 or in person at the body’s offices.

Impact on the sector

The sworn declaration of production is the piece that closes the harvest cycle in the DOCa Rioja: the certification of the wines, the control of eligible yields, and the traceability of every liter produced depend on it. With the deadline closing on November 30, Rioja wineries have less than a month from the publication of the official notice to reconcile their grape and wine data with the self-control system and avoid malfunctions in the certification of the 2026 vintage.

Source: Official Gazette of La Rioja, no. 211, of November 2, 2026, section III (Other Provisions and Acts), pp. 18552-18554 (official reference: BOR-A-20261102-III–4105).