Wine Law

514 WINE LAW things to eat. Here they gave us three sorts of wine to drink, not grapes, but made with fruits like beer and it was very good (…)” 15 . The taste for these “(…) wines made from juices from various plants that are cooked and fermented in the manner of Mediterranean grapes (…)”, such as pineapple, palma moriche ( Mauritia flexuosa ) or jobo ( Spondias Mombin ), passed from aboriginal Venezuela to Hispanic Venezuela, but it was not to the liking of Europeans, who considered them excessively sweet 16 . The grape, as said, was brought by the Spanish, and it began to be cultivated in the provinces of Coro and Cumaná. At first, the crops, from which little was expected due to the widespread belief that the tropical weather was hostile to grapes, had purely ornamental purposes. It was not thought to eat its fruit and, of course, neither to ferment it to obtain wine. Experimentation beyond the ornamental purposes began with the arrival of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese migrants at the end of the 19 th century 17 . The first commercial wines produced in Venezuela, in the middle of the 20th century, were produced from imported concentrated musts, with a somewhat poor result. The economic condition was the reason that led the incipient national industry to work with national musts. In effect, the loss of value of the national currency – the bolivar – against the dollar in the 1980s “produced the change that stimulates the creation of companies dedicated to the production of wines from national natural musts obtained in the country” 18 . Currently, the work of the Instituto de la Uva of the Universidad Centro Occidental Lisandro Alvarado 19 , located in the northeast of El Tocuyo, Municipality of Morán in Lara state, stands out. After the corresponding taxonomic and fertility studies, it was determined that, contrary to what was believed at first, the place had excellent climatic conditions for growing grapes. Nowadays, the Instituto de la Uva produces various types of low-cost, less elaborate and medium-quality wines 20 . 15 Letter attributed to Américo Vespucio, dated 18 July 1500. Cited in Cunill Grau, Geohistoria de la sensibilidad en Venezuela …, op . cit ., p. 478. 16 Cunill Grau, Geohistoria de la sensibilidad en Venezuela …, op . cit ., p. 478. 17 Bianco Dugarte, Hugo Waldemar & Ana Luisa Medina, Reseña histórica del vino en Venezuela, su control de calidad, en: Revista de la Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Los Andes , 2001, 2001, pp. 32 ff., at p. 32. 18 Bianco Dugarte / Medina, Reseña histórica del vino en Venezuela…, op . cit ., p. 33. 19 Source : http://www.ucla.edu.ve/dagronom/uva/default.htm. 20 “The products that have been produced with great pride so far are: Vino El Tocuyo (white, pink and red), Vino Viña Tocuyana (white, pink and red), Vino Valle Larense (white, pink and red), Vino Tinto Dulce Tipo Oporto San Lucas, Vino Moscatel (to consecrate) San Lucas, Vino Seco San Lucas (white, pink and red), Sangría La Guarita, y Vino Espumante (Champagne) Las Damas”; in: http://www.ucla.edu.ve/dagronom/uva/default.htm.

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