Tour Guide, Santiago de Queretaro, Mexico
| 2 mins read
How many undiscovered wine regions are left in the world?
I don't know exactly, but I'd be willing to bet that assumptions made about them include some combination of the following:
-They're far away and exotic, and/or
-They're newly emerging as a consequence of climate change, and/or
-They're very young in terms of viticultural history.
If I had ever placed that bet, I would have lost big.
That's because last week I visited a largely undiscovered wine region, in Querétaro, México and let me tell you, it is none of those things listed above.
It is not far away; rather, it's just a three hour and 20 minute flight from Atlanta from where I live - in the city of Querétaro. That's less than the time it takes me to fly to California.
It is not emergent in response to climate change; it's emergence, instead, has more to do with politics and demographics than it does with the environment. More on this below.
And it is not young, at all, in it's viticultural history: México boasts the very oldest wine-growing region in the Americans, established by the Spanish when they arrived in the sixteenth century.
Are you surprised by any of this? I was. I was also aware that I am just playing on the edge of something. That there's much (much) more to know about the wines. That I have barely scratched the surface of the food and culinary history, and what they mean for México's wine and spirits scene.
And that all of these things are attracting attention right now, thanks to variables as influential and global in nature and also international politics and "extreme viticulture."
Refer: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cathyhuyghe/2018/08/17/mexicos-wine-boom-and-the-trump-effect-impressions-from-queretaro/#268b919d2a25