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- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Pre-Roman
The Phoenicians began making sweet, rough wines in southern Spain.
Roman Hispania
The Romans used stone troughs for treading and fermenting grapes.
Themétodo ruralis still used in places today.
Moorish Spain
The Moors ate rather than fermented their grapes but the Christian parts of Spain
kept making wine as per Roman methods.
Late 18thcentury
Spanish winemakers began using airtight oak barrels, encouraging a flourishing
export market to South America.
1850s
French winemaking methods, introduced by the Marqués de Riscal, began replacing
the stone trough technique and quality improved.
1860s
Spanish winemakers smiled slyly as the phylloxera (a louse that attacks the vines)
plague in France boosted their own sales; then grimaced as the grubs spread south.
1960s
Miguel Torres shook the Spanish wine industry from its reverie with new techniques
and grape varieties.
Airing old grievances
While Spanish wine has improved dramatically, experts
often still point to a couple of problem areas. Some
reds, they claim, are still over-oaked – i.e. stored using
the wrong kind of oak cask or simply left in the barrel
too long. Certain whites still suffer from badly managed
oxidisation, a problem that cursed Spanish wine of old.
Indeed, Spain even boasts a whole genre of wines,
rancio, deliberately oxidised until they turn black.
The history of Spanish wine: key dates
Bodegadesigns
You’ve probably come
across the wordbodega.
It’s a term with a long
reach, applied to
wineries, cellars and
wine warehouses. These
days the Spanish wine
industry seems to be
placing more stock in
the appearance of its
bodegas. Frank Gehry,
Santiago Calatrava and
Norman Foster (see
section 3.2.5 for more
on all three) have all
designed futuristic
wineries in recent years.
Spanish wine’s
towering hero
The kudos for Spain’s
wine revolution is
often given to one man,
Miguel Torres. Inspired
by French and Australian
wineries he introduced
stainless steel
fermentation tanks at
his Catalan winery in
the 1960s, making the
first move to end
centuries of oxidisation
in Spanish wine. He
also, to the amusement
of other vintners at the
time, planted foreign
grapes like Merlot,
Cabernet Sauvignon and
Chardonnay in plots with
the microclimate for
the job.
