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Wine has been made in Spain for thousands of years and it
is known that it was an important supplier in Roman times.
Record exists, for example, of a shipment of nearly twenty
million amphoras from Spain to Rome in the year 20. It is
also known that wine from La Rioja was particularly highly
esteemed even then. The Visigoths who conquered Spain after
the Romans consumed enormous quantities of wine. And
in spite of the Muslim occupation, vines continued to be cultivated
and wine made from the grapes. With the Christian reconquest
and the establishment of a host of monasteries, much of the
wine production fell to the church. Saint Millán (473-574),
the most important saint in the region of La Rioja, is said
to have worked a miracle to quench the thirst of the multitude
by multiplying the amount of communion wine. The first poet
to adopt the Castilian language, Gonzalo de Berceo (writing
in a monastery in La Rioja in the 13th century), referred
to wine:
"quiero fer una prosa en román paladino,
en cual suele el pueblo fablar con su vezino,
ca non so tan letrado por fer otro latino,
bien valdrá, como creo, un vaso de bon vino."
"I wish to write prose in the speech of the labourer
which the people use to speak with their neighbour
as I am not gifted enough to write another Latin rhyme
I think it will help to have a good glass of wine."
And I, for one, will drink to that.
But it was the dreaded Phylloxera which definitively
put La Rioja on the wine map. From around 1860 onwards, this
aphid devastated vineyards throughout the world, most notably
French ones. A great supply vacuum was created and the wineries
of La Rioja, already vigorously adopting more modern (i.e.,
French) production techniques, were ready to fill the breach.
Names like Marqués de Riscal and Murrieta date from this time.
La Rioja owes its fine wine to its geographical position
and the consequent climate. It is sheltered by the Cantabrian
Mountains to the north and the Sierra de la Demanda to the
south, and irrigated by the River Ebro and its affluents.
Now La Rioja produces over 270 million litres of wine a year
(up from 180 million in 2000), of which about 70% is for the
Spanish market and the rest exported. The UK is the most important
foreign market, taking 22% of the exported wine, followed
by the US with 12.5%.
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