Your intrepid liquor reporter was at a hoity-toity wine tasting event last week, and tasted his very first Mexican wines.
Yes, gentle reader, you may be as shocked as I to discover that Mexico has more libations to offer than merely Corona and Tequila, so I chatted up the feisty Latina tub tarts with mucho gusto, summoning all of my broken tourist Spanish in a failing effort to impress.
While Mexico is overwhelmingly a beer & tequila drinking country, there is actually a long history of domestic wine consumption that is largely invisible to the tourist community.
It all began in 1521, when the Spanish Conquistadores ran out of wine during their victory celebrations for the defeat of the Aztec Empire. Knowing that a drunken soldier was a happy and obedient soldier, the governor of what was then referred to as New Spain quickly ordered the planting of European grapevines throughout the country.
European grapevines grew so well that wine imports from Spain rapidly plummeted, leading King Charles II of Spain to ban domestic grape production in the colonies, in order to protect the interests of the established Spanish vineyards.
Fortunately, a loophole was created for the Catholic Church, allowing Mexican wine to be produced for sacramental purposes, which was exploited with great skill by the Jesuit missionaries, who reaped both spiritual and financial rewards for having a monopoly on wine production in the new world.
As the influence of the Catholic Church waned, large-scale production began in the Baja Peninsula in 1791, near the location of present-day tourist trap Cabo San Lucas. Everything was rosy in the Mexican wine industry until 1857, when the Mexican Civil War saw most of the vineyards abandoned or destroyed.
Fast-forward to 1980, where pent-up demand for wine marked the beginning of the modern era of Mexican wine production. Once again, the Baja Peninsula became the epicenter of the Mexican wine industry.
Today, domestic wine production accounts for 40% of wine consumption in Mexico, with the remainder coming from other Latin American countries like Chile, as well as a bit coming from the old world wine regions of Europe.
While there are grape varietals that are native to North America, none of them produce a particularly good wine, so the grapes you will find planted in Mexico today are the same noble varietals you will find everywhere, namely transplanted varietals from the old world such as Merlot, Grenache, Tempranillo, and the like.
The best wine growing regions of the world are usually between 30-50° latitude, either north or south of the equator, as the grapes grow best when there are marked diurnal temperature swings.
Most of the wine production on the Baja Peninsula is located around 23° north of the equator, making it a bit warmer than optimal for grape production, so the local vintners have concentrated their efforts on grape varietals that love the heat, most commonly Cab Sauv and Grenache.
Here in Alberta, the most widely available Mexican wines come from the Monte Xanic winery, whose vines were originally planted by Franciscan missionaries hundreds of years ago.
The long-fallow vines were resurrected in 1987, when the Monte Xanic winery was founded during the rebirth of the Mexican wine industry, and has been continuously growing in popularity since then.
With most of their vineyard stocks hailing from Bordeaux, you will find the familiar varietals of Merlot, Sauv Blanc, Chardonnay, Syrah, and the like.
With production of only 50,000 cases per year, Monte Xanic is about half the size of the Mission Hill Winery in British Columbia, which faithful readers may recall your humble narrator waxing poetically about in the past.
My favourite was the Syrah / Grenache blend, with notes of violet on the nose, followed by a rush of ripe red fruit, toasted cocoa, and hints of vanilla on the tongue.
With over a dozen different varietals to choose from, Monte Xanic is a poster child for Mexican wines, and commands a good chunk of the domestic and export markets.
Although they are a fairly small producer on the world stage, we are still lucky enough to find Monte Xanic at well-stocked booze merchants here in Alberta. Point your smartphone at www.liquorconnect.com to find a nearby store that stocks their wares.
