Innovación en el reino de la monastrell. Cambio técnico e instituciones vitivinícolas en el sureste de España

Abstract

Recently, Spanish viniculture has played an absolute “revolution”: modern oenological techniques have spread in the majority of agrarian regions and denomination of origin has multiplied, reaching both quality wine production and international market conquest. Over a century ago, the Mediterranean regions achieved an intense wine industry specialization directed to the French market and, particularly, the Region of Murcia took a relevant part. The present research analyses its progress and shows changes happened in vineyards and wines from the latest 19th·til the beginning of the 21st century. Also, its trajectory is compared to that of Alicante and Albacete provinces (in which monastrell variety predominated too), whose ecological conditions have contributed to manufacture wines with an intense character, texture, colour and elevated gradation. In spite of overproduction problems and the need of technological modernization that have characterized the trajectory of the sector up to the latest 20th century, authors show dynamism in their wines -in particular those from Jumilla- and stand out technical and institutional changes in the last third of the past century. They conclude that both factors, together with the changeable flow of consumption, have been crucial in the improvement of quality, wine bottling increasing, and exports increment; unlikely an internal market characterized by the consumption fall.