Tropical wines – Part 1/3
Posted by Luis Vicente Elias on August 21, 2014
Tropical vineyards
In the broad set of classificatory systems of vineyards, read altitude vineyards, southern, northern …… and our trips to America we hear of tropical vines.
Used to manage the historical concept of “Mediterranean vineyard” as a paradigm originating in this type of farming, we had to look “the other Mediterranean” to justify the crops began distributing in the New World by early settlers.
Vineyards tropicales make clear to the Europeans that American viticulture producers have more than 500 years, has been an important task for us today and the vineyards of Latin America have produced wines that have justified the experience of centuries. At present we are studying vine landscapes in Latin America and some see their ancient origins or influence of native winemakers who came from various wine regions, and left on American territory the imprint of their countries of origin.
Samples of the influence of migration on viticulture, are for example vineyards in Vale dos Vinhedos Bento Goncalves reminiscent of Italian models originating accommodated but environmental conditions in southern Brazil.
The New and the Old World were joined by this culture that spread across many areas of this young continent and geographical reasons the first vineyards were implementation in Caribbean and tropical zones. Later some of these crops changed location, leaving in many cases these geographic areas to which we will dedicate this work.
In the old vine vineyards in theory raise the tropics would be a contradiction, as though I had said in the past, and as we shall see in this are frequent. But despite the environmental and climatic conditions are so specific that have generated particular types of such vineyards, so it is of interest to describe these peculiarities.
In this article we will present some examples and vineyards singularities of tropical Latin America.
The first and last American vines
Some documents refer to the first grape plantings were made ??in the Island of the Spanish before this date In 1494, Diego Columbus already had a vineyard on the island, leaving to return to Spain.
There are other very early references to the existence of vines, including by Hernán Cortés to Mexico later travels to the mainland carrying plant and planting forcing it to those settlers who were to have encomiendas. This way is vineyard in Mexico in the early sixteenth century.
To the south the vineyard stops in Peru before 1546, and there are jars of wine dated 1555, in the area of Arequipa in the south of the country.
It is curious that the island receiving the first vines, has started planting again a few years ago, and is developing a prized white wine to be described later.
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