La Mancha

La Mancha
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Historic landscape in the center Spain , Geographically and Castile-La Mancha (Castillo-La Mancha) and ahead of New Castile (Castilla la Nueva) refers. The region is approximately 80,000 square kilometers to the north, are Castile-Leon (Old Castile) and the southern Andalusia the third largest in Spain. La Mancha and the region lying west of it Extremadura belong to the vast plateau landscape Meseta . She became famous mainly by the writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) and his novel "Don Quixote de la Mancha". The huge level with the windmills there are extreme climatic conditions with frigid winters to below 20 ° C minus and very hot dry summers with frequent up to 40 ° C (the Moorish name "Manxa = parched land" is very apt, in Spanish it means "the spot").

On average, every day there are more than eight hours of sunshine, 365 days a year. The Precipitation is an average of 300 to 400 mm per year is very low. The soil consists largely of reddish-brown sand and clay with small limestone islands. The Bestockungs density is very low (2.5 m spacing) and the cultures are kept low so that each vine gets enough water due to drought. The strange, checkered pattern of vineyards, Marco is real

The region designated as the area of La Mancha DO covers but only a part of this vast area, but with almost 200,000 hectares still the biggest in Spain. There have been repeated attempts to divide into several DO's, which failed however to date. The vineyards of the region with 450,000 hectares, making up almost half of Spain. Other areas of DO in the region are Almansa , Manchuela , Méntrida , Mondéjar , Ribera del Júcar , Uclés and Valdepeñas . In 2003 Spain was the quality level Vino de Pago introduced. In the region there are six of them, which are Campo de la Guardia , Dehesa del Carrizal , Dominio de Valdepusa , Finca Elez , Pago Florentino and Pago Guijoso .

La Mancha is sufficient under the Madrid almost 200 miles deep in the south to the border of Andalusia. More than three-quarters of the vines with the white Airén planted. It was after the phylloxera disaster used heavily, because they have hot and dry for the climate (which is why fungal diseases are almost unknown) is the ideal variety. In large part, from simple white wines and base wines for distillates are produced. From the mid-1980s, a change came down to a quality wine. At the EU entry in 1986, Spain had to undertake to set aside about one-third of the vineyards. Other white wines are Pardilla, Viura (Macabeo) and Chardonnay. The main red varieties are Cencibel (Tempranillo), Garnacha, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.