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Old vines in Latin America: The gift of time

With many vineyard sites established in the 16th century or possibly earlier, Latin America boasts a significant number of old vines. But as Tim Atkin MW discovers, winemakers don’t like to shout about it...

The site must have looked propitious: the soil was rich and red, the vegetation lush, dense and green. Christopher Columbus founded the colony of La Isabela in what is now the Dominican Republic in 1493 as a base from which to search for precious metals – especially gold – but the second European settlement in Latin America was almost certainly the site of its first vineyard, planted alongside other crops.


See Tim Atkin’s top 12 wines made from old vines


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