DO Empordà wine

Complementary information

In our country, vines were introduced by the Greeks when they arrived on the Catalan coast and founded the Emporion factory there (fifth century BC), so that the lands of the Empordà – and specifically the foothills of the mountain of Rhodes -- were the first in the Peninsula to have vineyards. From then on, wine culture continued to evolve and we find that in the Middle Ages the cultivation of vines was in the hands of monasteries and religious orders. Some outstanding testimonies of this situation are preserved, such as that of the writer Francesc d'Eiximenis, who mentions the "monastrell d'Empordà". In the eighteenth century the vineyard became the symbol of the agricultural impulse of its cultivation area, a bonanza that translated into an increase in demographics. However, at the end of the nineteenth century came the phylloxera crisis that would devastate the vineyards throughout Catalonia, and the Empordà wine sector was ruined. The overcoming of the crisis, already beginning in the twentieth century, meant the orientation of production towards sweet and rancid wines. It was aid from the Mancomunitat de Catalunya and the republican Generalitat (first third of the twentieth century) that led to a recovery in wine production: the quality of the production process was improved, new wineries were built and marketing systems were perfected. From the 1960s, new processes of technological renewal and adaptation of wines to market trends began, which led to the establishment of the DO in 1975.