There are many people who still think that once wine table is bottled, it does not improve its quality any more but, at most, it keeps it. This, which is true for almost all the other drinks such as whiskhy, gin, cognac, or even for normal quality wine table, is not true for a good Rioja.
 

One of the basic characteristics which distinguishes quality Riojan wines is precisely that once they are bottled they do not spoil their quality but they improve it a lot with the passage of time.
 

        If you know how to choose qualities you buy and you are patient, you may manage to get bottles of extraordinary or even unique quality.

        Of course it is necessary to preserve the bottles under a series of minimum conditions so that the miracle takes place. Such conditions are not difficult to fulfil but we have to take them into account.
 
 

  Bottles must be always laid on a surface or reversed so that the cork is wet, a fact which maintains it swollen doing pressure on the walls of the neck and preventing the air, which is the greatest enemy of good wine, entering.

The room where wine is stored must not have sharp temperature oscillations. Formerly, it was necessary to preserve wine in rooms from 10 to 15 degrees. At the present time wine can surely resist temperatures from 8 to 20 or 25 degrees due to modern elaboration and stabilization techniques of wine, but wine does not resist sharp oscillations both upwards and downwards.

Bottles must be in the dark or at most in half-light since light (both sunlight and artificial light) produces changes in the colour, taste and bouquet of wine because they react (with protides, acids, sugars and tannins = taste).

The room must have no strong smell , no matter which smell is, as it filters through the cork and it is transmitted to wine. Therefore, nothing of perfumes, deodorants, camphor, food, strong cheese, vinegar and so on.

The room must not be either very dry or very wet. If it is too dry, the cork will get smaller and it will allow the air to enter. If it is too wet, we have the risk that the cork gets rusty, which immediately makes wine mouldy.

The room must be well breezy if possible with a window always open to the outside and, of course, never with heating since it is almost certain that corks would dry.
    Ventilation avoids wine making mouldy.

There must not be shakings (machines working near), because this makes that chemical reactions, which are being produced inside a bottle slowly and constantly, hasten and that wines follow a different process, impossible to determine before hand, since it depends on the composition of each wine but spoiling it completely. If you add sugar to a glass of water and you do not shake or stir it, it will take a long time to dissolve. On the other hand, if you stir it, it will dissolve at once. From that it is said that wine "feels dizzy" whenever it travels.