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and early settlers were judged too enthusiastic about the
product. In any event, the Spanish crown abruptly for-
bade the production of local wines in 1699, dooming early
Mexican vineyards and forcing the colonials to purchase the
Spanish wines of the day or go without. Catholic missionaries in
need of sacramental wines did cultivate vines, however, despite
the viceroys’ determined interference.
After the Independence, the regulations were modified to protect
the national production and the import of wines and liquors was
taxed very heavily.
Humboldt, some years before, had praised on a particular way
the vineyards of Paso del Norte and from the Provincias Internas:
they flourished, and besides of the general chaos of the time,
they grew up.
Today the valley produces about 75 percent of Mexico’s wines,
many winning international recognition. The valley was blessed
as one of the rare places in the world where premium wine
grapes can be grown. The road to the present was not easy for
the valley and its wines. In 1857, after Mexico’s War of Reform,
the Catholic Church was stripped of its land holdings, which
included the missions in Lower California that was left to Mexico
af-
ter
the U.S.-Mexico war. All church property
be-
came the property of the state. The
government sold the former lands
of
the Mision de Santo Tomas to a
pri-
vate group, which established
the
Bodegas de Santo Tomas
in 1888.
Since the independ-
ence of Mexico,
the vine were of
French origin
and since the
Porfirian era,
not taking
into con-
sideration the
period of the
Revolution, the
French wine
started to
be assimi-
lated to
pres-
tige.
From
the 19th century till World War II
At the end of the XIX century, the Concannon family,
pioneer in the Californian state (Livermore Valley,
US) convinced the Mexican government to take
advantage of the viticultural potential of
the country and introduced a dozen
French vine types and varietals
in
Mexico.
In
1885, the Mexican
govern-
ment was worried
about
the extension of
the vine
plantation but
could not
develop
it due to the
social
troubles (Revo-
lution)
in the country.
In the XX century,
the wine production
suffered from two
headaches in Mexico: one
was the phyloxera epidemy
and the revolution of 1910. The
first one destroyed around 1900
a large amount of the Mexican
vineyards.
The second one pushed the Concannon
family to leave the country but later another
Californian Wine maker, Pirelli Minetti, planted
another range of vine on hundred acres near to the
city of Torreon.
In the 1930’s the industrial growing and production of grapes is
related to the numerous arrival of the miners from European origin
in the Valley of Santo Tomas. They discovered abandoned plants
and equipment, they restored them and founded so in 1938 the
first winery of the country called “Bodegas de Santo Tomas”.
After the second World War
Only in the period of stability post-1940 did a modern winemak-
ing industry emerge, helped by rigorous protectionism. There
was revived interest in table wines in the twentieth century.
However, in 1989 free trade arrangements with the European
Union caused the bottom to fall out of the domestic market. Pric-
es and production fell by nearly ninety percent under competition
from inexpensive, particularly German and Chilean, imports.
Mexico’s economic crisis and devaluation of the peso in 1994
caused unemployment
and other economic hard-
ships from which