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Missionary grapes

"Land in sight!" shouted Rodrigo de Triana from La Niña. Was the Sevillian sailor, perched on the mainmast of the caravel, in his right mind? Two months of seeing only sky and sea - the time that had elapsed since the expedition, commanded by Admiral Christopher Columbus, left Palos de la Frontera (Huelva) - had sapped the crew's morale. But Rodrigo de Triana was not hallucinating. Not this time. A few fathoms from La Niña, with the sea calm, the insistent ringing of a small bell moored to the deck of the Santa María, the captain's ship, startled the sailors in the early hours of 12 October 1492. It was the announcement of a new world. And that frantic ringing of metal, the first sound of the Discovery... for the Europeans, for the natives already knew it.

From that moment on, and with the differences inherent to a metropolis and its colonies, the flow of products travelling in both directions was constant: potatoes, chocolate, tobacco, tomatoes and corn crossed the Atlantic to take root in the Old World; and in the opposite direction, sugar cane, rice, oranges, wheat and wine arrived in the New World. This does not mean that in America there were not some wild grapes that could even be used to make a brew, but not the vine(vitis vinifera) from which grapes are used to make wine. According to most sources, the first place wherevitisviniferabegan to be cultivated was in Mexico by order of Hernán Cortés.

black grapes vineyard wine

Alongside the explorers, hustlers, sailors and soldiers, the other conquistadors arrived on the continent, those of whom Eduardo Galeano said:

They came. They had the Bible and we had the land. And they told us: "Close your eyes and pray. And when we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the Bible".

In their evangelising adventure, the Jesuits spread throughout the continent, building missions to convert the native populations to the Catholic faith. Logically, for the celebration of the Eucharist they needed wine, a precious and scarce commodity that had to be imported from Spain. In fact, at that time wine was used not only to quench thirst - it was safer than drinking water - but also for medicinal purposes and as a restorative. So, the missionaries decided that a solution, albeit a long-term one but one that would ensure a continuous and constant supply of wine, was to plant vines around the missions and produce liturgical wine themselves without depending on the metropolis. In this way, the Jesuits first and, after their expulsion from all the dominions of the Spanish crown by the Pragmatic Sanction (1767), the Franciscans later became winegrowers... for their own consumption.

junipero serra franciscan monkFray Junípero Serra, Franciscan born in Petra, Majorca, 1713 - 1784

After the Franciscans, led by Fray Junípero Serra, took over the role previously held by the Jesuits, in 1767 they left Mexico for the territory of Alta California (today comprising the states of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah in the USA) accompanied by their inseparable vines. In 1769 he founded the Mission of San Diego de Alcalá (today San Diego) and followed northward the so-called Camino Real, the overland route that linked the missions of Baja California (today the state of Mexico) with those of Alta California, until he reached the mission of San Francisco de Asís (today San Francisco). In all the missions that were founded along this route, nine during Fray Junípero's lifetime, vines were planted around the missions. Junípero could be considered the father of the wines of California (USA), today one of the most productive and best wine regions in the world. This variety brought by the Franciscans to the USA from Mexico was called missionary grapes. Today, there are only a few acres of this variety left in California.

As a curiosity, Fray Junípero Serra is the only Spaniard to have a statue in the United States Capitol (Washington D.C.), where the most illustrious and representative figures of the nation are represented. This fact becomes even more relevant if we remember that each of the states that make up the USA only have the right to propose two names of illustrious figures to be immortalised with a monument... and California proposed Fray Junípero.

Javier Sanz
Storyteller through his blog, books, collaborations in the press and radio with the sole aim of bringing history in an entertaining and entertaining way to those who have left it aside. Director of the digital and interactive magazine "iHstoria". Collaborations in the newspaper Diario de Teruel, the magazine Iberia Vieja and the magazine Clío. Radio collaborations in La Rosa de los Vientos (Onda Cero), Gente Despierta (RNE) and La Noche es Nuestra (EuropaFM).

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