Wine Law

Analysis for a Legal Profile of the Import, Production and Marketing of Wines in Cuba Freddy Andrés Hung Gil 1 1. Brief Historical Review of Wine Imports and Consumption in Cuba; 2. Wine Production in Cuba?; 3. Import and Marketing of Wines in Cuba: The International Wine Festival of Havana; 4. Foreign Investment: Legislative Background. 1. Brief Historical Review of Wine Imports and Consumption in Cuba Wine consumption in Cuba is closely linked to the process of Spanish colonisation. Through the main Cuban ports – at first Santiago de Cuba and later San Cristóbal de La Habana –, galleons arrived in Cuba which, together with the essential products for the consumption of the first inhabitants, transported wines from Catalonia, Jerez and Malaga. The wines were stored in barrels that, once emptied, were used for other purposes, mainly to store water, grains and gunpowder 2 . In 1542, Emperor Charles V ordered that Spanish wines were sent to the West Indies. At the beginning of the colonisation, the largest quantity of shipments was made to the islands of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Cuba, but from 1569 onwards Cuba became the largest recipient of wines on the Iberian Peninsula 3 . The expansion of the marketing and consumption of wine in Cuba, 1 Full time Civil and Family Law Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Havana, Cuba. Email: freddy@lex.uh.cu. 2 “ Historia del Vino en Cuba ”, Ecured , available at: https://www.ecured.cu/Historia_del_Vino_en_Cuba; René GARCÍAVALDÉS says about it: “The wine came from the Marco de Jerez , the most universal and famous of all at the time. It was the Sherries that were most capable of supplying the ships in Andalusian ports. The infrastructure of the time benefited them. Sherry boots with a capacity of 500 litres each were placed on the ships to accompany the sailors in their adventures”, vid . GARCÍA VALDÉS, René, “El vino español y su primacía histórica en Cuba (I parte)”, in Excelencias Gourmet , 3-7-2018, available at: https://www.excelenciasgourmet.com/index.php/es/tradiciones/el- vino-espanol-y-su-primacia-historica-en-cuba-i-parte. 3 Idem .

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