Mexico
The oldest winery in the Americas, and a coastal Baja valley that supplies most of what the country drinks.
Winemaking in the Americas started in Mexico. Spanish colonists planted from the 1520s, and Casa Madero in the Parras valley, founded in 1597, is still operating, which makes it the oldest winery on the continent. The industry was then suppressed for centuries: in 1699 the Spanish crown banned new plantings in the colony to protect Spanish exports, and the ban held until independence.
The Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California, inland from Ensenada, now makes around three quarters of Mexican wine. It is Mediterranean, cooled by morning fog off the Pacific, and it grows cabernet sauvignon, merlot, tempranillo, nebbiolo and grenache with no clear national style and a great deal of experimentation. Salinity in the irrigation water is the region's structural problem.
Elsewhere, Coahuila, Querétaro and Aguascalientes grow at high altitude to escape the heat. Domestic demand is growing quickly from a low base and most Mexican wine never leaves the country.
What the label says
- NoneNo appellation system
- Mexico has no legal appellation hierarchy. Valle de Guadalupe on a label is a producer statement.
Signature grapes
our choiceKey regions
- Valle de Guadalupe
- Ensenada
- Baja California
- Parras
- Coahuila
- Querétaro
- Aguascalientes
A dashed outline is a region we describe but do not yet hold a page for.
Worth knowing
- Casa Madero, founded in 1597, is the oldest winery in the Americas.
- A Spanish ban on new colonial plantings from 1699 held back the industry for over a century.
- Valle de Guadalupe makes about three quarters of Mexican wine.
More in North America
Sources
The description, the reading of the classification system and the choice of signature grapes are ours. Region and grape records are built from Wikidata (CC0) and Wikipedia infoboxes (CC BY-SA 4.0). American AVA boundaries come from the TTB (public domain).