From the oldest vines of the Americas in the northern State of Coahuila, to more edgy wines being produced today in Baja California, Mexico’s wine journey is as fascinating as the country’s own history.
A Brief History of Mexican Wine
It all started with the Spanish Conquistadors who arrived in the 16th century and found a place where natural vines were already growing and that were being used by indigenous people for ancestral rituals.
The Conquistadors began to bring their own vines to plant and cultivate. It is said that the first grapes they brought with them were the Vitis Vinifera variety, Listam Prieto, originally from the Canary Islands, known as the Mission grape.
In 1524 an executive order was given by Hernán Cortés, who led the expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire, which stated that for every 100 natives in service to the Spanish, 1000 vines were to be planted. Five years later, King Carlos of Spain ordered that vines should be sent with every cargo ship going to the “Americas”. New plantations started to grow and the history of Mexican wine unfolded.
Vines were planted from Mexico City up to the North, in places like Queretaro, Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí, following the routes of Conquistadores who were making their way across these new territories looking for gold. Along that journey they made it to what is now the most Northern part of modern Mexico, my home State of Coahuila. Here they found an oasis in the middle of the desert where native vines were growing, fed by mountain springs that were ideally suited to viticulture. They named the place, Santa Maria de Las Parras, literally translated to “Holy Mary of the Vines”. Over the next decades they started to produce wine there themselves.
By 1595 the Spanish crown was increasingly threatened by the quality and quantity of wine being produced in Mexico. The conquistadors and missionaries preferred it and it began to impact Spanish wine imports. The King prohibited planting any more vines and ordered the destruction of all the vineyards already planted.
In 1597, despite the prohibition, special permission was granted to Lorenzo Garcia, a member of the Jesuit Mission of Santa María de las Parras, to produce wine for the sacrament. The reasons for this remain unclear.
Nonetheless, this is when the first official winery outside of Europe was established, with the name of La Hacienda San Lorenzo; the first in the whole of the Americas. In fact, it still exists today as Casa Madero, which has been owned by the same family since 1893 and is a household name in Mexico, given its connection to one of the country’s most revered revolutionary Presidents, Francisco de Madero.
© Rodrigo Aguilera, 2023.
The official prohibition on wine production remained in place for the rest of the country up until Mexican independence in 1824, more than 300 years later.
The Mexican Wine Renaissance
At the turn of the 20th Century just as wine making was starting to have a resurgence, there were two catastrophic events. The first, phylloxera, which wiped out many of the existing vines. The second, the Mexican Revolution from 1910, which turned into a tumultuous decade not leaving much space for the development of viticulture. But despite these setbacks the early 20th Century saw a small renaissance.
In 1907 a group of Russian religious emigres, called the Molokans, fleeing service in the Tsar’s army, established themselves in Baja California. They built a bustling village under the hot sun of the Guadalupe Valley, 80km outside Tijuana, where they started to grow alfalfa and grapes. And they gained a reputation for making good wine.
In 1920 the prohibition of alcohol in the USA meant production went South of the border with more wineries and distilleries being opened especially in Baja California, which developed a thriving tourism industry.
In the 1930’s that big taxes were imposed on European wine which all but stopped imports. This led to foreign investment into Mexico and the arrival of European families like Angelo Cetto & Domec, who brought their native vines with them. They remain amongst the biggest producers of wine in the country to this day, all of them still based in Baja California.
In 1987 Mexico entered the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) opening to worldwide wine importation. Whilst negatively impacting many of the already established wineries, this new competition paved the way for premium wine production in Mexico.
One of the first “boutique” wineries in Mexico was Monte Xanic, in Baja California. In the following decades more and more have come to market producing high quality world class wines.
The new wave of Mexican wine
Mexico has 8,500 hectares of vineyards spread across 14 of the Country’s 31 States, with the majority in Baja California followed by Coahuila and then Queretaro. This level of production is still relatively small if you compare it with other new world wine regions like Mendoza in Argentina that has 150,000 hectares.
The grapes being cultivated are: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Grenache, Tempranillo, Syrah, Petit Sirah, small plantings of Pinot Noir, Cabernet franc, Mision, Caladoc and also a lot of Italian grape varieties like Nebbiolo, Barbera & Zinfandel.
In terms of white the most widely planted grape varieties are Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Xarel-lo, Verdejo, Parriellada, Riesling, Macabeo & Ugni Blanc.
One of the novel things you’ll find with Mexican wine are the unusual blends such as Cabernet Sauvignon/Syrah/Malbec, which are characteristic of the uniqueness and diversity of the region. However, more single varietals are now being made as winemakers start to better understand the terroir and the most suitable grape varieties. And, although more conventional approaches to winemaking still prevail, we are starting to see the avant garde of biodynamic and natural winemaking take root.
The Mexican wine industry may have been in “recession” for a while, with its rocky history, but it is making a major comeback with incumbent winemakers growing in confidence and with the arrival of more experienced winemakers from all over the world, who see the potential the terroir has to offer and are investing their time and money.
As the fifth most geographically diverse country in the world, Mexico has a huge variety of microclimates, altitudes and other natural factors for winemakers to play with. From the cool moist winds of the Pacific’s Humboldt’s current that lick the coastline of Baja California, to the vineyards in the Sierra Arteaga at over 2,200m, and everything in between. The sky's the limit for a region that was once considered too hot to make palatable wine.
Other facts
Mexico joined the International Organisation of Vine and Wine in 2016
The Consejo Mexicano Vitivinicola was established in 2009 as the first industry organization promoting the wine industry in Mexico.
The consumption of wine in Mexico has grown from 450ml per capita in 2013 to 1200ml in 2022.
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