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Regions

Comprehensive description of all European growing areas, their grape varieties, traditions and legal rules with maps.

Description to Castilla-La Mancha

Castile-La Mancha (Spanish: Castilla-La Mancha) in Spain is an autonomous community with the capital Toledo and covers 79,463 km². Together with Madrid and most of Castile-León, it forms the region of Castile, whose name goes back to the medieval kingdom of the same name. Castile-La Mancha is the successor to the historic region of New Castile and comprises the five provinces of Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara and Toledo. The area borders seven regions. Clockwise, these are Madrid to the north-west, Castile-León to the north, Aragon and Valenciana to the east, Murcia to the south-east, Andalusia to the south and Extremadura to the west. Together with Extremadura, Castile-La Mancha is part of the vast Meseta plateau landscape (see map at the bottom).

History

The origins of viticulture can be traced back to the 12th century, when these areas were conquered by the Christian population in the course of the Reconquista (reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula after Muslim conquerors from North Africa had subjugated the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century). However, viticulture is said to date back to the Roman era. After the discovery of America in 1492 by Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Spanish conquistadores planted vines from their homeland in the colonies of the New World. The Listán Prieto variety from Castilla-La Mancha became the progenitor of many so-called Criolla varieties in Central America and South America under the name Mission. Castile-La Mancha is known for its many windmills and also for the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) and his famous novel "Don Quixote de la Mancha".

Kastilien-La Mancha - Campo de Criptana bei Ciudad Real - Windmühlen

Climate & Soils

The extensive plain with its numerous typical windmills has extreme climatic conditions with frosty winters that can drop below 20 °C and hot, very dry summers that often reach temperatures of over 40 °Celsius. The Moorish name "Manxa" (dried land, Spanish for "the spot") describes this very aptly. This is why fungal diseases are almost unknown. On average, there are more than eight hours of sunshine a day, 365 days a year. The average annual rainfall is very low at just 300 to 400 mm. Large parts of the area are characterised by calcareous, nutrient-poor and often stony and gravelly soils. These include Almansa, La Mancha, Manchuela, Méntrida and Valdepeñas. In the Mondéjar and Uclés areas, the soils are clayey, sometimes with a high potassium content and in the river valleys also alluvial soils. The best sites (e.g. the Vinos de Pago) are located in the higher areas.

Vineyards

A large proportion of the vineyards are planted with the indigenous Airén variety. It was used extensively after the phylloxera catastrophe in the 19th century because it is ideally suited to the hot and dry climate. A large proportion of the wines produced are mass-produced white wines and base wines for distillates. After joining the EU in 1986, around a third of this huge area was cleared. The vine density is very low at 2.5 metres apart and the vines are trained very low to the ground vine training so that each vine gets enough water. The peculiar, chessboard-like pattern of the planting is called Marco real. From the mid-1980s, there was a shift towards quality wines.

Wine-growing areas

The Castilla IGP area for country wines covers the entire region and occupies around 130,000 hectares of vineyards. There are also eight DO and twelve Vino de Pago areas for quality wines in mostly higher-lying areas. Some of these are enclaves within the Castillla IGP area and the La Mancha DO area. The latter is by far the largest Spanish area with around 152,000 hectares of vineyards. The typical grape varieties of the area are listed there.

Kastilien-La Mancha - Karte

Windmills: by Lourdes Cardenal - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Map: by Tschubby - Own work, Topographic background: NASA, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

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