I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.

I'm Levy Dalton.

I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Oh, In Texas you'll find many different species of grape varieties, some of which are indigenous to the area and have

an instrumental in breeding root stocks that have saved the post-Viloxor

production of Vitis-Finifro wine. But though grapes have been growing

there for millennia, Texas's wine trade begins much later when Spanish missionaries and colonists brought European vines to the region.

In fact, before prohibition, Texas enjoyed a thriving centuries-old period of wine production

when the area was New Spain.

Wine economics of the Spanish colonial era were quite different than the secular wine trade were used to today.

In the early days of New Spain, one of the primary objectives of the colonizers was to convert Native American populations to Christianity,

and they needed missionaries and Sacramento wine to accomplish this goal.

The Casa de Contretacian, a tradehouse established by Queen Isabella the First, collected taxes on all goods

entering Spain from New Spain. And the Casa also helped control and regulate goods that went

in the other direction. In 1519 it was

CASA policy to have cutting scent in every ship that sailed to New Spain. They

really wanted to make sure that there would be enough

Sacramento wine. Well, it worked. The spread of vine plantings, in fact, was so

successful that in 1595, just 76 years later, Spain reversed their policy because they didn't want

New Spain to be too self-sufficient having their own wine supply.

The Nifera Vines made their way to what is now New Mexico. Most

likely these were Mission or Paeis grapes from farther down south and it was most likely

cuttings from these New Mexican Mission grapes that made their way to El Paso de Norte in 1659.

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