The wine-guzzling conquistadors who arrived in South and Central America from Spain in the 1500s were responsible — directly or indirectly — for introducing winemaking to those lands. Hernando Cortés, perhaps the most successful of the conquistadors and later governor of Mexico, defeated the Aztecs in 1521.

After much celebration, he and his soldiers were out of wine. One of his first orders of business was to direct all new Spanish settlers to plant vines on the land they'd been granted. Winemaking flourished. In fact, it flourished to such an extent that the settlers needed to import less and less wine from Spain.

The king of Spain, who wanted a captive market for Spanish goods, wasn't happy about this. He levied heavy taxes and ordered vineyards destroyed in all of Spain's new colonies. The edict was enforced most aggressively in Mexico, and the growth of the burgeoning wine industry there came to an abrupt halt.

The church was the sole exception to the king's edict. Just like in Europe, vineyards survived under the care of the church. Missions — particularly Jesuit missions — were established early in Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Mexico. Later, a series of missions along the Pacific Coast would bring winemaking to California.

Colonial Experiments in North America

Early settlers brought with them a mighty thirst for wine. Imagine their delight when they found a landscape practically smothered by grapevines. Upon closer inspection, however, they found vines unlike any they were familiar with back in Europe. Being the pioneers they were, they forged ahead and fermented anyway. The first wine from native American grapes was made in Jamestown in 1609, and it paled to what they had consumed in Europe.

The colonists' next step was to import vine cuttings of Vitis vinifera from Europe so they could grow familiar varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay. All up and down the Atlantic coast settlers planted vines from every great European wine region. Even Thomas Jefferson planted vines at Monticello. No one succeeded. Each vineyard would die off after only two or three years. It was thought that the extremes of weather were the reason for failure, or that indigenous diseases were at fault.

Even though the vinifera vines failed, the side effect of these experiments was the emergence in the 1800s of new American hybrid varieties. These hybrids became the foundation for the wine industry in the eastern United States. Winemaking centers emerged in Ohio, Missouri, on the shores of Lake Erie, and in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. The American wine industry was on its way.

California Dreamin'

Beginning around 1770, Franciscan monks established missions — and planted vineyards — up the coast of what would become California. Father Junípero Serra led the way when he planted the first vineyard at Mission San Diego. He traveled north and established eight more missions. His work gave him the name “the father of California wine.”

The Gold Rush of 1849 brought frenzied growth, both in terms of population and vineyards. By this time Sonoma had 22,000 acres under vine, and Napa had 18,000. The Santa Clara Valley and Livermore Valley were widely planted and had numerous wineries at this same time. Many pioneer vintners settled south and east of the San Francisco Bay where most of the bottling plants were located. Railroads arrived, and now California wines were available in eastern markets and shipped around the world. By the end of the century, all of the state's winemaking regions were producing wine. California had become the premier wine-growing region in the country.

An International Wine Crisis

In 1863 an unidentified vine disease was being talked about in France's Rhone Valley. By 1865 the disease had spread to Provence. By the late 1860s vine growers all over France were watching their vineyards die before their very eyes. Over the next 20 years it decimated nearly all the vineyards of Europe. The scourge was phylloxera, an insect indigenous to the eastern United States. European Vitis vinifera vines had no evolutionary protection against it.

The parasite spread and affected vines in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. For a while, eradicating phylloxera seemed hopeless. Eventually a solution presented itself: graft vinifera vines to pest-resistant American rootstocks. It worked, but it was a long and laborious undertaking to graft and replant each and every vine in Europe.

There's been some debate that the quality of wine declined in the postphylloxera era. No one will ever know for sure. But if you want to try a wine from Vitis vinifera vines grown on their own roots, try a Chilean wine. Chile is the only wine-producing country in the world that escaped phylloxera.