Mexico

The Consejo Mexicano Vitivinícola's timeline says the conquistadors and missionaries brought vines in 1520 and began planting and making wine in 1522. In 1524 Hernán Cortés ordered every settler to plant a thousand vines, because the missionaries needed wine for mass. Priests and soldiers searching for gold found the spring of today's Valle de Parras in 1574, and the Hacienda de San Lorenzo, now Casa Madero, was founded there in 1597; the council calls it the oldest winery in the Americas. The Jesuit Eusebio Kino reached Baja California in 1683, and the first harvest there is believed to date from 1707.

By 1855 Parras was Mexico's main wine centre. Bodegas de Santo Tomás in Ensenada followed in 1888, and Russian settlers founded the community of the Valle de Guadalupe in 1906. Mexico joined the OIV in 1970, left in 2009 and rejoined in 2016. The council dates the Ley de Fomento a la Industria Vitivinícola to 2018.

Mexico's agriculture ministry places the country's wine belt between 30° and 50° N, crossing Baja California and part of Sonora. The 2024 overview by the agricultural information service SIAP contrasts three settings. The valleys of Baja California have a Mediterranean climate with warm summers and mild winters. Zacatecas has mineral soils and a desert climate. In Querétaro, in the Bajío, it describes a climate that stays fresh by day and night and suits varieties such as Merlot. The ministry notes that well-drained soils are warm and wet soils cold, that stony soils give lighter, more perfumed wines and clay soils more solid ones, and that some northern areas have rainy summers.

The official sources describe Mexican wine by region rather than by a national style. SIAP credits the Mediterranean climate of the Baja California valleys with high-quality grapes and says the combination of mineral soil and intense sun in Zacatecas gives complex flavours. The agriculture ministry says that summer rain in parts of the north gives wines with a fixed, soft acidity, and that each vintage differs because the grapes must survive harsh weather. These are general statements; no official description of wine character by appellation was found.

The Consejo Mexicano Vitivinícola represents the whole grape chain, from table grapes and raisins to wine, brandy and juice. It lists 17 states with more than 200 wineries: Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Sonora and Zacatecas. In 2018 it promoted a collective mark for Mexican wine.

SIAP's 2024 figures are for "industrial" grapes, which include grapes for brandy and juice: Zacatecas produced close to 30,000 t in 2023, 38% of the national total, and the Valle de Guadalupe 23,911.7 t, 31.1% of the national total and 98.8% of Baja California's. No national register of wine appellations was found on an opened official page.