Region & History

In 1978, archaeologists in Jumilla found charred seeds of Vitis vinifera, scattered across three sites far apart from one another: the Copper Age settlement of El Prado, the necropolis of El Molar, and the Cueva de los Tiestos. This traces winegrowing here back more than five thousand years, older than in almost any other corner of Europe. Phoenician and Greek traders arrived later, but the vines were already standing before they even reached the coast.

Rome then brought something even more important than the vine itself: centuries of stability. Grain, olive, and wine formed the classic triad of Roman agriculture, and with political stability, winegrowing on the Altiplano grew noticeably. Remnants of presses from the 15th and 16th centuries still survive, and travelers from the rest of Europe were already reporting on a developed wine industry in this dry region between La Mancha and the Levante.

The real boom came in the 19th century, and it came through someone else's misfortune. When phylloxera destroyed France's vineyards, merchants there urgently needed a replacement: robust, dark wine to blend with their own depleted stocks. Jumilla delivered exactly that. The so-called vino de doble pasta — double-pressed, deep dark, and high in alcohol — went across the border by the barrel. The money from this financed new vineyards and, in 1910, even its own Estación Enológica to advise winegrowers.

Phylloxera itself didn't reach Jumilla until 1911, and at first caused hardly any damage. The sandy-clay soil made it difficult for the larva to progress, and while half of Europe had long since switched to American rootstock, the region stuck with its ungrafted vines. This reprieve lasted almost eighty years. In 1961, the Ministry of Agriculture officially recognized Jumilla as a Denominación de Origen, an early date in Spanish wine law. Then, in 1989, the louse finally struck, destroying around sixty percent of the vineyard area within five years. Those who survived replanting did so on grafted rootstock. Those who had stood before were sometimes left standing, and it's precisely these old vines that now produce the region's best wines.