Mexican Wine - History of Wine Making in Mexico

History of Wine Making in Mexico

According to legend, Hernán Cortés and his soldiers quickly depleted the wine they brought with them from Spain celebrating the conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521. Because of this, one of Cortés’ first acts as governor was to order the planting of grapevines throughout New Spain.

In the early colonial era, ships arriving to Mexico and Spain’s other colonies carried grapevines. In certain areas, Spaniards found a native type of grapevine, but it did not lend itself well to winemaking. However, vines from Europe grew very well here, and they were planted in monasteries and haciendas in the states of Puebla, Coahuila, Zacatecas and others. In 1597, Casa Madero was founded by Lorenzo García in the town of Santa María de las Parras (Holy Mary of the Grapevines) as the oldest winery in the Americas. This area of Coahuila soon became a major wine producer due to its climate and good supplies of water. The vines that were established here were later exported to the Napa Valley in California and South America.

Vineyards in the Americas, especially New Spain were successful enough that wine exports from Spain to America plummeted. Because of this, Charles II decided to prohibit the production of wine in Spain’s colonies, especially Mexico, except for the making of wine for the Church in 1699. That prohibition stayed in force until Mexico’s Independence. However, many missionaries refused to abide by the edict and continued to produce wine for normal consumption on a small scale. One of these was Jesuit priest Juan Ugarte, who planted the first vines in Baja California when he arrived at the Loreto mission in 1701.

From the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th, most wine production was done by clergy. The Santo Tomás Mission, founded in Baja California by Jesuit priests in 1791, reactivated larger scale production of wine in Mexico. In 1843, Dominican priests began growing grapes at the nearby Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe del Norte mission, located in what is now called Valle de Guadalupe. This valley is one of the few in the world, along with others such as the Napa Valley and the Rhone Valley, in which premium wine grapes can be grown.

In the 1850s, as part of Mexico’s Reform War, many of the Church’s land holdings were taken by the state. Most of the small wineries tended by missionaries were eventually abandoned. In 1888, the former lands of the Santo Tomás Mission were sold to a private group, which established the first large-scale commercial winery and the earliest winery in continuous operation, called Bodegas Santo Tomás. Initially, the wine made by the group was sweet and of low quality.

During the period of Mexican history known as the Porfiriato (1880–1910), wine production in Mexico increased and spread to other regions of the country. In the Baja California area in 1904, Russian immigrants known as Molokans, a pacifist religious group fleeing service in the Tsar's army, purchased 100 acres (40 ha) of land and began producing wine grapes. They encouraged others to do the same, helping the area acquire a reputation for making good wine. However, winemaking was set back by the Mexican Revolution as many lands were abandoned by their owners or destroyed by the rebels.

Wine making in Mexico began to experience a comeback in the 1980s, with wine production peaking at four million cases a year in the latter part of the decade. However, the 1980s also opened Mexico’s small wine market to foreign competition, which hurt it. Baja California, which produces 90% of Mexico’s wine, only sells about 1.5 million cases a year today, but the quality of this wine is generally higher.

Since the 1980s, wine production, especially in Baja California, has been steadily improving with better tending of vineyards and incorporating modern advancements in winemaking. Most wineries here are young, established only since the 1980s and 1990s, but some enthusiasts are calling the Valley of Guadalupe area the “next Napa Valley.” The wine industry is growing rapidly and the quality of the wine is improving. Mexican wine can be found in 38 countries in the world and many vintages have won international awards.