by Nicolette L. Cagle, February 26, 2019
The earliest colonial movement from Spain to the Americas drew heavily from Andalusia. Peter Boyd-Bowman found that Andalusians made up the largest regional group among identified Spanish emigrants from 1493 to 1519; among 195 identified arrivals in Cuba from 1520 to 1539, 41 percent came from Andalusia (Boyd-Bowman 1973).
These migration routes changed over time. From the middle of the nineteenth century, Galicia, Asturias, and the Canary Islands supplied most Spanish expatriates in Cuba (Kenny 1961). In Dácil Juif’s study of nineteenth-century Cuban records, nearly half of the European immigrants in her sample came from the Canary Islands (Juif 2015). The emigration from the Canaries was large and sustained, and the family connections remained close.
That close connection, however, does not make Cuba an extension of Spain. Cuban culture is inseparable from Indigenous histories, the African diaspora, and movement through the Caribbean. Migration transformed Cuba through many routes, not one (Knight 2008). This tasting follows only one strand of that larger history: how several Spanish landscapes help us think about the places people come from.
Three of the wines lead us directly through Andalusia and the Canary Islands. The fourth, from Murcia, is the outlier. Murcia borders Andalusia and extends the tasting eastward along Spain’s Mediterranean side. It lets us compare a hot, dry continental landscape with the high Granada plateau, the maritime volcanic slopes of Tenerife, and the hills of Málaga.
Our Wines
Bodegas y Viñedos La Capuchina, Capuchina Vieja Moscatel Seco, 2016 — DOP Sierras de Málaga, Andalusia, Spain
Andalusia is traditionally recognized for its fortified wines, including sherry, but it also contains a wide variety of dry red and white wines (Johnson and Robinson 2013; Robinson 2015). Málaga gives us a useful distinction. Wines labeled DOP Málaga are historically associated with sweet and fortified wines, especially those made from Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel. DOP Sierras de Málaga covers unfortified wines. Pasas de Málaga is something different again: it protects sun-dried Moscatel de Alejandría raisins, not a third category of wine (Ministerio de Agricultura, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente 2013).
Capuchina Vieja is 100 percent Moscatel de Alejandría from the northern part of Málaga. La Capuchina lies among vineyards and olive groves, and the winery describes the light, summer temperatures, and loam soils as fundamental to its wines (El Suplemento 2018). Our notes place the vines in lime-rich loam, with olives growing nearby. The fruit is harvested by hand, and the wine is fermented in stainless steel, preserving the freshness and aromatic character of the grape.
In the glass: Crisp and fresh, with citrus and tropical white fruit, followed by honey, jasmine, and rose.
At the table: Sardines with lime, seafood, or a simple salad.
Bodega Cauzón, Cauzón Tinto, 2016 — Vino de la Tierra Norte de Granada, Andalusia, Spain
Granada rises higher than Málaga. The vineyards of Norte de Granada sit against the Sierra Nevada, where alluvial soils collect at the base of the mountains and many sites climb above 1,000 meters. There is plenty of sun for ripeness, but the altitude and moving air keep the fruit from becoming simply warm and sweet. The soils tend to be shallow, poor in organic matter, and easily eroded. The growing season produces wines that hold sunlight and freshness at the same time.
Cauzón Tinto brings together Tempranillo and Merlot. Ramón Saavedra farms without synthetic chemicals and ferments with native yeasts. The wines are neither fined nor filtered, and additives are avoided; no sulfur is added. Around this vintage, Cauzón Tinto also moves away from oak and toward stainless steel, letting the fruit and mountain-grown structure speak more directly (Selections de la Viña, “Bodega Cauzón”). “Natural” is useful here when it describes decisions in the vineyard and cellar, rather than acting as a substitute for them.
In the glass: Dark, ripe fruit carried by freshness, with the savory, earthy character that makes the wine feel more at home beside food than by itself.
At the table: Lamb.
Suertes del Marqués, 7 Fuentes, 2016 — DOP Valle de la Orotava, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
The Canary Islands give this tasting its most direct link to later Spanish migration to Cuba. They also give us its most visually distinctive viticulture.
Valle de la Orotava lies on the north side of Tenerife. Vines climb the slopes of Teide and descend toward the Atlantic, generally between about 250 and 800 meters. The soils are volcanic; the climate is humid and maritime, with trade winds moderating the warmth. Phylloxera never reached Tenerife, so old vines can remain on their own roots. Some are trained in cordón trenzado, the braided cord: long vine arms are woven together and can be moved so that potatoes or other crops may be grown beneath them (Escapement Magazine 2016). The form is practical, but it also makes agriculture visible as a continuous relationship among people, vines, food crops, and scarce land.
The 7 Fuentes label gives the blend as 90 percent Listán Negro and 10 percent Tintilla. Winemaker Jonatan García Lima identifies that second variety more precisely as Castellana Negra. Fruit comes from numerous small vineyards around the valley. The wine ferments in concrete and spends eight months divided between concrete and seasoned barrels and larger foudres, with native yeast and very limited sulfur (Harding 2019). The vines range from relatively young plantings to parcels approaching a century old.
In the glass: Crushed strawberries and raspberries, then smoke and a savory finish.
At the table: Duck, lamb, or tagine.
Casa Castillo, Valtosca, 2009 — DOP Jumilla, Murcia, Spain
Jumilla lies inland in southeastern Spain, with vineyards generally planted from about 400 to 800 meters. Summers are hot and dry, winters are cool, and the soils are known for sand, clay, chalk, and lime. In places, the lime forms a hard crust. Phylloxera arrived late here, in 1989, and Monastrell remains the denomination’s central grape. In 2018 the appellation contains roughly 30,000 hectares of vineyard, much of it devoted to Monastrell (Foods and Wines from Spain 2018).
Valtosca is unusual: a Syrah from a region identified with Monastrell. The vines are about twenty-five years old, planted around 750 meters in sandy clay and chalk. They are farmed organically in practice and harvested by hand. Natural yeasts carry out fermentation in concrete, followed by twelve months in 500-liter French oak barrels, about 20 percent new (European Cellars, “Casa Castillo: Valtosca”). The larger barrels and modest proportion of new oak give the wine time and air without covering its sense of place.
In the glass: Blueberries, smoke, leather, and burnt tires. The fruit is dark, but the more compelling notes are earthy, animal, and slightly severe.
At the table: Beef, veal, or pasta with a deeply savory sauce.
Final Thoughts
These wines do not reproduce Cuba, and they are not meant to. They place several Spanish points of departure on the table. Andalusia gives us both the aromatic clarity of dry Moscatel and the altitude of Granada. Tenerife gives us volcanic ground, Atlantic weather, and a vine-training system shaped by mixed farming. Murcia gives us heat, chalk, and a Syrah that sits just outside the regional expectation.
Taken together, they show why migration is never only a line on a map. People carry tastes, crops, farming knowledge, and memories of landscape. Those things change when they arrive somewhere new. The quotation marks around “Cuban” keep that distinction in view: these are wines of Spain, tasted through one part of Cuba’s long and complicated relationship with Spain.
References
Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 1973. Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the New World (1493–1580). Special Studies No. 34. Buffalo: Council on International Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo.
El Suplemento. 2018. “Bodegas y Viñedos de la Capuchina, Premio Andalucía Excelente 2018 en Bodega del Año.”
Escapement Magazine. 2016. “Suertes del Marqués Wines.” December 7, 2016.
European Cellars. n.d. “Casa Castillo: Valtosca.” Technical sheet.
Foods and Wines from Spain. 2018. “Monastrell in Its Element.” October 3, 2018.
Harding, Julia. 2019. “Suertes del Marqués, 7 Fuentes 2016 Valle de la Orotava.” JancisRobinson.com, January 11, 2019.
Johnson, Hugh, and Jancis Robinson. 2013. The World Atlas of Wine. 7th ed. London: Octopus.
Juif, Dácil. 2015. “Skill Selectivity in Transatlantic Migration: The Case of Canary Islanders in Cuba.” Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History 33 (2): 189–222.
Kenny, Michael. 1961. “Twentieth Century Spanish Expatriates in Cuba: A Sub-Culture?” Anthropological Quarterly 34 (2): 85–93.
Knight, Franklin W. 2008. “Migration and Culture: A Case Study of Cuba, 1750–1900.” Paper presented at The Historical Society’s Conference on Migration, Diaspora, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in History, Baltimore, June 5–7.
Ministerio de Agricultura, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente. 2013. Pliego de Condiciones: Pasas de Málaga.
Robinson, Jancis, ed. 2015. The Oxford Companion to Wine. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Selections de la Viña. n.d. “Bodega Cauzón.”