Old Vines: The Gift Of Time

With many vineyard sites established in the 16th century or possibly earlier, Latin America boasts a significant number of old vines. But as Tim Atkin MW discovers, winemakers don’t like to shout about it

- Tim Atkin MW

The site must have looked propitious: the soil was rich and red; the vegetation lush, dense and green. Christopher Columbus founded the colony of La Isabela in what is now the Dominican Republic in 1493 as a base from which to search for precious metals – especially gold – but the second European settlement in Latin America was almost certainly the site of its first vineyard, planted alongside other crops.

Did those first vines produce grapes? It would have been a close call, as La Isabela was abandoned after three years because of disease, hurricanes and hunger. And if so, what were they? Listán Prieto (aka País, Criolla Chica and Mission) brought from Castilla-La Mancha and set to become the most planted grape in the Americas by the middle of the 16th century? Moscatel de Alejandría? Or some other grape, sourced perhaps from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, Columbus’ last port of call to take on provisions before crossing the Atlantic? In the absence of archaeological finds, we don’t know.

What we do know is that wine moved south with settlement and conquest. Everywhere they went, the conquistadors planted vines, in Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and finally Argentina, partly for religious purposes, but more often for secular ones: medicine, food and pleasure. As early as 1519, the merchant vintners of Seville made sure that every ship leaving for the Americas carried cuttings or seeds as part of their diverse cargo. By the mid-16th century, Peru was the centre of the Latin American wine trade; within 25 years of planting its first vineyard (in 1539), the country had 40,000ha. The Portuguese too brought vines from Europe – probably Madeira – to Brazil in 1532. Only Uruguay was late to the vinous party, waiting until the arrival of Jesuit missionaries with their vines in the 1620s.

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