HISTORY

Using irrigation channels derived from the Mendoza river and following the Huarpes agricultural tradition, the development of the vines, the fruit orchards and pastures. The isolation from its political centre, for several months each year, led the people of Mendoza to try and develop a way to the coast.

Consequently, its products began to be carried, by carts and mules troops, to Buenos Aires, Paraguay and up to High Peru Viceroyship. Mendoza soon became a major commercial centre and the cities along the way, as well as the destination ones, began to tax their trade, which in many occasions made it necessary to rely on the Crown to go against the constant abuses. The city of Buenos Aires found in the taxes on wine one of its main income, using them to build the original cathedral, the fort and the prison.

Spain had tried in vain to stop the expansion of the fledgling wine economy through various Royal orders imposing the eradication of vineyards in Chile, Peru and Cuyo, claiming that they were competitors to the wines from the Peninsula. However, it was the opening of the port of Buenos Aires in 1809, which began with a real economic conflict with Cuyo, allowing the entry of European wines, beginning a long dispute between protectionism and free imports, in which Mendoza was the main participant.

In these remote and arid lands, Don Jose de San Martin decides to uphold the liberating company. While he organized the army and promoted the Declaration of Independence, he had trees planted, opened schools, built canals, spread the use of vaccines and succeeded in the elimination of extraordinary duties on the fruits of the province.

The return from the exile of Sarmiento coincides with a new development of the ancient winemaking industry. It was now enhanced by European strains brought by Pouget, a French expert who lived in Chile due to political reasons, and who came to Mendoza bringing techniques and vegetal varieties. This wine industry based on the European methods would then be continued by Benegas.

In 1861, a historic event marked the Province. At night, the ground shuddered and an earthquake completely destroyed the city, killing a significant portion of its population and most of its leaders.

The triumphal entry of the Andean Railroad, the impetus of the Maipú and Paraguay locomotives, on April 7, 1885, established another moment of hope in its history.

The subsequent arrival of many Spanish and Italian immigrants who brought their winemaking traditions, both to Cuyo in order to produce wines, and to the Northeastern region for consuming it, has fomented the beginning of a stage in the wine economy of Argentina, where the big volumes produced locally, were mixed with adulterated wine in Buenos Aires.


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