2010 REPORT

The successful celebration of a conference with such international repercussions as WineFuture has undoubtedly been the most important event of 2009 in our wine region, although it is still beset by an obvious concern for the difficult economic situation in every market, a situation in which Rioja has once again displayed its strengths, to the extent of increasing its market share and reinforcing its leadership among Spanish wines.

This leadership was manifest in Rioja’s role as host of the most significant conference in the world of wine of the last few years, which brought the main leaders of international vitiviniculture to our region. WineFuture Rioja 2009 amply met the expectations and wishes of the Control Board regarding quality, the number of participants, and the lectures by major opinion leaders, who contributed many ideas that will certainly be of great help in achieving the main goal sought by most of us who participated in the event: to design future strategies for the wine sector, both nationally and internationally. In fact, both the main conclusions of WineFuture Rioja and the strategic lines described by the experts coincide to a great extent with the work carried out by the D.O. Ca. Rioja during the last few years, and we are convinced that they will help us to find the necessary refocus that is required by the new circumstances affecting every market economy. All in all, WineFuture Rioja provided a great opportunity for our wine region to show the prescriptors and influentials from the world of wine who visited us the reasons behind our leading position among Spanish wines and the current positioning of Rioja among the international elite.

The final balance of Rioja wine sales in 2009 has turned out better than expected throughout the year in view of the current market recession, which is affecting wine consumption in every country. Having increased our market share despite the poor market situation has confirmed the undisputed leadership of Rioja among Spanish designations of origin and provided proof of the loyalty that Spanish consumers show to Rioja wine at a time of economic difficulties —probably due to a perception of our wine as a sure value. The strong position of Rioja wines is mainly due to the fact that they are very competitive, adapt to demand, have a diversified and innovative range for different market segments, and maintain the image of aged wines as a differentiating component and quality benchmark. The wisdom of Rioja’s strategy of making aged wines the spearhead of its image, focusing investments on making, selling and promoting these wines, the solid distribution base it has in all its markets and the powerful sales structure of its wineries have been key factors in achieving these results.

The decision to increase its promotional spend in 2009 on its main markets to a global amount close to 10 million euros (ten times what the Board used to spend barely five years ago) is a good example of how confident the Rioja wine sector feels about its future. The majority of growers and winemakers consider that it is precisely during times of economic difficulty and falling consumption that we have to make even greater efforts to maintain our position and be in the best possible situation once the crisis has been overcome. ;

This vision is clearly market-oriented and we are taking market demands as the basis to develop an ambitious promotional plan, focused on those countries with greatest potential for growth in exports (United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden), as well as our main market, which continues to be Spain. In 2009, we launched two new campaigns in Mexico and Switzerland which, as with the United States, have been co-financed with CMO funds.

The results of these investments are allowing us to increase the awareness and positioning of our wines on international markets, as confirmed by a survey that the Spanish Wine Market Observatory commissioned to the UK consultants Wine Intelligence in 2009. The poll concludes that Rioja wine has higher loyalty ratios on its main markets than the most prestigious wine regions in the world, making our region the world leader in translating brand awareness into purchases, ahead of wine regions such as Bordeaux, Burgundy and Chianti.

The firm commitment to quality of Rioja’s growers, who are aware of the fact that this commitment will be one of the key factors in continuing to expand our markets and taking new consumers on board, is undoubtedly another factor in the excellent positioning that Rioja has reached in international markets. Rioja’s commitment to quality is behind the final results of the 2009 harvest, which experienced difficulties at the start but ultimately provided a very high level of quality, with a final official rating of ‘Very Good’. The great professionalism of Rioja’s growers and winemakers and the investments made in vineyards and wineries, in terms of technology, R&D and human capital, are decisive factors in achieving these excellent results. This is also the case of the Control Board’s policy of guaranteeing quality with measures such as containing production yields in order to optimise grape quality.

All in all, taking into account the context of the current economic downturn and the behaviour of the competition on the markets, the general balance of our Designation in 2009 allows us to maintain our confidence in our quality model and establish as our essential goal to maintain this model that characterizes us and constitutes one of our main strengths, as this is what has fostered stable and sustainable growth for the whole industry. One of the ways of achieving this is to consolidate our management model by representing the interests of producers and traders through the Rioja Wine Interprofessional Organization and its actions through the Control Board. The Rioja wine industry has unanimously requested, with the backing of the region’s Autonomous Communities, that the Control Board be turned into a Public Corporation. This is considered a prerequisite for Rioja to be able to continue growing with the appropriate instruments and a legal status that will guarantee respect for its heritage, goodwill and fair competition.

Report 2010 in pdf