The Regulating Council is responsible for controlling the origin of the products protected under this denomination of origin, their quality and their behaviour in the market:
  • The origin control of the Rķas Baixas Denomination of Origin starts with the inscription of the rural holding in the Council's Registry. Shortly before the grape harvest, the grape production and quality are assessed in a representative percentage of the rural holdings protected under the Denomination of Origin. Once the grape harvest has started, more than 60 inspectors (duly authorised by the Department of Agriculture and the Regulating Council) supervise the grape harvest process, transportation and unloading in wine cellars. They control the origin of the grapes and the general performance, updating their records daily and creating a final document where they include the number of grape kilograms introduced and must volume. These control actions recur to the latest technologies in order to get real-time and flawless data, such as for instance the implantation of a winegrower chip card, which contains registration data and sends information to a Control Terminal (TPV).
               

  • The Quality control of the wines protected under the Rķas Baixas Denomination of Origin is individually applied to each consignment. Thus, every time a wine cellar wishes to qualify a wine consignment, it has to apply for authorisation from the Regulating Council, which will then send an inspector who will take the applicable wine samples and label the deposit. These samples will undergo an instrumental analytical test (physicochemical and biological) and organoleptic and sensorial tests, all of them carried out by the Qualification Committee of the Regulating Council, which will later compare its results with those from other official laboratories.

  • The Regulating Council is also responsible for looking after and defending the wines protected under the Denomination of Origin. In order to do so, it collaborates with other organisations (ICA) in order to carry out Product Controls and therefore avoid fraudulent practices in the market.
Another task that this Regulating Council has assumed is the Dissemination of the Denomination of Origin and the Promotion of the different protected wines. This task has allowed the Council to introduce these wines in unexpected foreign markets.