Mexico’s wine country: The subtle savor of our land

Oftentimes, when thinking about Mexico you think about tequila, beautiful beaches, pre-Hispanic cultures and beautiful buildings, but most surely not about wine.

A group of Mexican entrepreneurs and enologists are keen on changing this and they are, slowly but surely, reaping the benefits of more than three decades of planning and hard work as they are revitalizing the Mexican wine country.

Mexico is one of America’s top producers of grapes, however most of them are destined to Brandy production, making our country the world’s 3rd Brandy producer. Wine produced in Mexico, on the other hand, amounts to only 20 million liters a year.

Grape and wine production started in 1524, when conquistador Hernán Cortés issued and order stating each colonist would plant 1,000 grapevines for each 100 native employees, each year for five years.

This gave a head start to Mexican wine production when compared to Chile, in 1548, and Argentina, in 1551. However, in 1699, Charles II of Spain banned the colonies from producing wine, attempting to protect Spanish wine from the French surplus. Thus, the still developing wine industry in Mexico came almost to an end, except for religious orders who were still able to produce their own wines and as result small vineyards were kept in the missions throughout the country.

The Mexican wine industry kept dormant until the 1920s when the National Association of Wine Producers was created by fifteen wineries, and in the 1970s a more refined wine production started in the Guadalupe Valley in Baja California.

Many regions in Mexico have small vineyards and wineries, but around 90% of México’s annual production comes from Baja California, and two main zones can be identified as Mexico’s wine country: The area in Baja California and Sonora; and the Parras Valley in the Laguna region, located between Durango and Coahuila.