As the Spanish wine industry has grown and deepened in complexity in the past couple of decades well beyondAndalusia’s traditional sherries, oenophiles the world over have become increasingly familiar with names like Rioja, Penedés, and Rias Baixas. But to many, Majorca's Plà i Llevant and Binissalem-Mallorca might still require a wee bit of explaining.

Winemaking an Ancient Local Tradition

Actually, winemaking in the Balearic Islands goes back to Roman Hispania, a century before Christ (these were, after all, the folks who invented the phrase “in vino veritas”), but the industry was wiped out around at the end of the 19th  century by that dread bug phylloxera, as it was in France and elsewhere in Europe. Unlike in France, here it didn’t really recover either its quality or quantity for a century. Since the 1990s, a campaign to upgrade equipment and techniques has led to a growing variety of good and even...

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