A Good Year for Mexican Wine and the Tourism Business

By John Ganjei for Mexico Today

Mexican wine production has increased almost 40 percent. This was clear at the annual Vendimia harvest festival in Baja California, where 90 percent of Mexico's wine is produced. There were more than 30,000 attendants, 40 concerts, and wine tastings and contests.

Mexican wine has only recently won acclaim. In 1699, Spain banned Mexico from wine production because this posed a competitive threat to the peninsular wines. The first Mexican wine producer was the Bodegas de Santo Tomas winery which started in 1888 (over 60 years after the war of Independence). It still exists today. 

 After a century of increased wine production, in the 1980s, the Mexican government removed trade barriers, which brought the Mexican wine industry into a competitive global marketplace. During that time, Hans Bankoff Sr. (current head of Monte Xanic) and other wine lovers used this increased global competition as an impetus to make better quality wines. 

This spurred a boom in boutique wine making in the region (San Antonio de las Minas, the San Vicente Valley and the Santo Tomas Valley). As a result, Mexican wine rapidly improved. 

Wine consumption has doubled in the past 10 years and Mexico’s National Wine Council predicts it will double again by 2015.