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From the Reconquest to the 20th Century
Spanish winemaking really took off after the Reconquest of Spain by the Catholic Kings. The re-established religious communities and monasteries played a significant role in this process; the monks and friars of various orders worked to recover the winemaking tradition. Wine was vital for their religious rituals, and they also filled their cellars, supplying wine to pilgrims and local taverns. Thus, the vineyards flourished once again in areas surrounding the monasteries and abbeys, and later in other regions.
Throughout the centuries, wine not only became an essential part of local diet. Its potential for sale also took on enormous importance. The emergence of commercial exchanges brought with them the birth of different wine producing districts, and created economic activity in the various towns and regions that supplied the Court.
In the 19th century the unfortunate arrival of phylloxera in northern Europe, which devastated the vineyards at mid-century, contributed to the consolidation of the winemaking industry. During this period, many French winemakers settled south of the Pyrenees, finding this the only way to preserve their livelihood. They brought with them their grape varieties, machinery and methods, among which were the planting patterns of the vines, control of fermentation and the use of sulphurous anhydride. Some of the Cabernet-Sauvignon and Merlot vineyards existing today in La Rioja and Ribera del Duero date back to this era.
The phylloxera blight served, therefore, to bring modernisation to Spain's vineyards and wineries. When, at the end of the century, the blight finally reached the peninsula, a solution had been devised to put an end to it: grafting onto an American rootstock immune to the blight. As a result the recovery of the vineyards was much less traumatic in Spain than in other European countries.
The 20th century proved to be crucial to the Spanish wine producing industry. At first, cautiously, certain reforms were introduced to improve the quality of wine. New industrial techniques began to replace some old-fashioned traditions. The industry also had to confront the Civil War, which condemned the vineyards to abandonment, and, at the end of that, the Second World War, which brought the European wine market to a standstill. The sector began to recover in the fifties. Since then, Spanish winemakers have undertaken the re-organisation of their vineyards and the renovation and modernisation of winemaking processes and wineries, to place Spain on an equal footing with winemakers elsewhere.
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