Over 2000 years ago
In Castelló we have been making wine for more than two millennia. The wine culture was brought by the Greeks and Phoenicians, but it was the Romans who promoted the cultivation.
The Via Augusta and the secondary communication routes opened by the Romans made wine trade and transportation faster, and gave birth to vineyards near the roads, such as the town of Mas d’Aragó, in Cervera del Maestrat.
Over 2000 years ago
In Castelló we have been making wine for more than two millennia. The wine culture was brought by the Greeks and Phoenicians, but it was the Romans who promoted the cultivation.
The Via Augusta and the secondary communication routes opened by the Romans made wine trade and transportation faster, and gave birth to vineyards near the roads, such as the town of Mas d’Aragó, in Cervera del Maestrat.
Strong, thick and red
Castelló’s ideal summer weather, with very little rainfall during these months, ripens the grapes and makes them achieve a high level of sugar that, later, through fermentation, will become the alcoholic degree of the wine.
This has always been the case, and that was key for the former Castelló wines to be exported to Bordeaux to improve the body and grade of the most prestigious French wines.
The Carló, a wine of legend
The Carló was the wine that was made in the Benicarló area -which gives it its name-, Càlig, Vinarós and Peníscola. In the 15th century, Carló wine was already well known and appreciated throughout Europe.
Since then it was also exported to South America, where the cultivation of the vineyard and winemaking were reserved as a monopoly of the homeland. The colonies were therefore provided with Spanish wines such as Carló, which endured long voyages by boat without turning into vinegar. The enormous popularity this wine had in countries like Argentina made it a legend.
Carmelite Liquor
At the end of the 19th century the friars of the Carmelite convent of the Desierto de las Palmas, next to Benicàssim, began the production and sale of Carmelite Liquor, made with grapes and more than 30 medicinal herbs.
Highs and lows of phylloxera
The 19th century brought a series of misfortunes that came from North America and attacked the vineyard throughout Europe. The most terrible was phylloxera, but while it caused damage only in France, it created a real economic golden age for Castelló winemakers, who could barely keep up with the demand of the devastated French market.
The arrival of phylloxera in Spanish vineyards led to a new stage in viticulture, in which science began to be applied in the field to prevent and combat crop diseases.
Story of a "Señorito"
After the phylloxera, and especially after the great frost of 1946, many vineyards were replanted with highly productive and resistant hybrid vines that do not require grafting. The “Señorito” variety was the most widely planted in Castelló.
The wines made with “Señorito” reigned at tables from that moment, but had a sudden end: in 1982, the Spanish agriculture minister Jaime Lamo de Espinosa, in response to the condition imposed for Spain’s entry into the European Common Market, called for them to be dug up.