Spain and Portugal for Visitors

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 180 million litres of wine a year, 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%.