1800 – Rioja’s Winemaking Techniques Evolve
While innovations were discovered, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the Rioja wines we know today began to truly take form.
Up until the 19th century, Rioja wine was primarily produced for local consumption, often necessitated by the tithes that were collected by churches and monasteries, which also owned extensive vineyards.
Around the turn of the 1800s, Riojan winemakers, including Baldomero Espartero and Manuel Quintano, started to take revelatory trips to France. During their visits, they discovered advanced winemaking techniques from French pioneers. These advanced ways of making wine were taken back to the region, eventually laying the groundwork for modern Rioja wines.
In 1787, Manuel Quintano used Rioja’s first known Bordeaux-inspired recipe for crafting wine. And in 1852, Winemaker Don Luciano Murrieta used the knowledge he had acquired in France, putting it into practice at the Duque de la Victoria winery in Logroño, Rioja’s capital. This resulted in the first Rioja wines that were fully crafted with Bordelaise techniques, giving way to finer wines.
Also, during the 1850s, French winemakers fled from the vineyard-destroying Great French White Blight, and some of them resumed their craft in Spain, enticed by its prime conditions for vine cultivation. These were the years in which some of the most iconic Rioja wineries were founded, including Carlos Serres, Bilbaínas, CVNE, López de Heredia, Franco Españolas, Gomez Cruzado, and Martinez Lacuesta, among others.
During their visit, the French winemakers changed Rioja forever. They not only introduced techniques that spurred the modernization of Rioja’s winemaking, such as barrel aging, they also expanded the region’s geographically constrained reach into the French market.
As the 19th century advanced, so did the modernization and geographical distribution of Rioja’s wines. Moving into the 20th century, the craftsmanship of Rioja’s wines would only get more defined and refined.
