Mexico is at long last developing a wine culture. The total vineyard area in the Americas’ oldest wine-producing country, may have fallen to 29,000 ha/72,000 acres by 2011 but only just over 10% of this land is devoted to wine production. Most of it was planted in the 1960s in response to huge domestic demand for brandy. This demand was fuelled by protectionist import taxes on both wines and spirits, which also encouraged foreign investment from the likes of Martell and domecq, brandy producers who built on the efforts of long-standing indigenous wine producers such as Casa Madero, L. A. Cetto, and Santo Tomás. According to SAGARPA, the Mexican Secretary of Agriculture, 160,440 hl/4,238,376 gallons of wine were made in 2011, while oiv estimates were 393,000 hl.
