Since three thousand years ago, when the vineyard arrived in Spain, comming from its natural craddle the eastern Mediterranean, wine has been an important part in Spanish culture. Since then it has changed a lot. The modern viticulture techniques applied nowadays to improve the quality levels and the actual chemical tests, have nothing to do with those manual cultivation formms brought by the Phoenicians.

The Phoenicians:
The Phoenicians are beleived to have spread the cultivation of the grape throughout the Mediterranean region, about the year 1.100 before Christ, they arrived to the shores of Cadiz and Tartessos. The Phoenician civilization and its introduction of the vineyard in our country is registered in many books from the Antiquity. Estrabon a Greek geographer from the first century before Christ, talks about it in his book Geography, and also Rufo Festo Avieno, Roman historian from the IV century A. D. Mentions these facts in his book “Ova Maritima”.
These historical Greek and Roman documents have been later on corroborated by the finding of two wine presses in the Phoenician deposit of Castle of Doña Blanca, 4 kms. away from Jerez de la Frontera, an archeological deposit from the VII century before Christ.

The Phoenicians not only settled down in Cadiz and the South of the Iberian Peninsula, but they also arrived to the north east and the east coast of Spain, where later on they would be replaced by Greek settlers. A result of this enlargement was the origin of a quick and big development of the wine culture in this area. In fact we know that in Cataluña in the region of Penedés in the IV century before Christ some of these red varieties brought from the Orient and Egypt were cultivated. And where now the Utiel-Requena vineyards are situated, viticulture was practiced from the V to the IV centuries before Ch. And maybe even before, as it can be proved trough the Iberian rests and the Phoenician amphoras found in Los Villares. In the VI century before Christ the first Greek glasses arrive as well.

Greek and Romans:
The arrival of the Greek and the Romans to our land was very important for the development of the Spanish viticulture history. To start with it brought the preference of the Mediterranean people for Red wines, that from then onwards it would be preferred to any other one. It also meant from then onwards the beginning of new elaboration methods.

The Greek for example, boiled the wine recently fermented to obtain wines that would resist transportation, in such a way the got wines with a high alcohol content, and to which they added water afterwards.
The Romans propagated and encouraged the cultivation of the variety “viniferas” all over the Iberian Peninsula. The archeological rests in Alicante prove the presence of wine amphoras and great villas destined to wine cultivation. Rest of an amphora factory have also been found. In “La Rioja”, it is known that the former inhabitants elaborated wines that were sold to the merchants afterwards. But when the Roman legions reached the Upper regions of the river Ebro the Romans taught them their own vinification techniques, that consisted in pressing the grapes in stone wine presses, letting the wine ferment in its own natural way. This method introduced by the Romans is still used in some areas of The Rioja Alavesa for the elaboration of some Young Wines.

Besides these new techniques brought by the Romans, the arrival of the Roman Empire meant for Spain the beginning of a very important trading current. From the South the people from Cadiz sold olive oil, wine and fish to the Roman people. The Romans also cultivated wine in the southern areas of Córdoba (nowadays D.O. Montilla Moriles), to send their wines afterwards to the metropoli.
In the north east, in Roman times, the Penedés region became one of the cardinal points from the Mediterranean wine culture and a fundamental trading center. In fact at the end of the first century A. D., the exports from the Penedés Red Wines was already considerable and supplied the markets of Galia, Germania, Italy, Britain and Africa.
This wine region was so important at the time in the wine trade thata Roman millionaire Marcus Porcius invested part of his fortune buying  
Penedés and other vineyards from different areas in Cataluña.
In the Middle Ages the falling of The Roman Empire started, in the year 476 the Peninsula suffered together with the rest of Europe the invasion of
The Barberian people, but the ones that settled down in this area were the Visigoths that had lived in the eastern provinces of the empire, in touch with Roman culture. Later on in the fith century, they became Christian, compliting their romanisation process, that was a quick and definitive process.
The Visigoths were big drinkers specially of wine. They gave great importance to viticulture, and they even promulgated some laws that protected the vineyards preferently to other cultures.

MOSLEM SPAIN:
When the Moslems entered the Iberian Peninsula in the year 711, the Spanish Middle Ages got split in two: the Arab and the Christian one:
In the area under the Arab domination, the Coranic law forbids the consumption of alcohol. Despite the decisive phohibition of the Sacred book the cultivation of wine continued in Spain, mainly for table grape. There are also references to the wine from Málaga called by them “sharab al malaqui”. Going even further in the Califato de Córdoba the quality of Montilla Moriles wines was very well known, and as a curiosity, the first written news that have arrived to us about the wines from Alicante were picked up by the Arabs, that sang in verse its excellencies. Even the consume of Xerry wine was maintained without problems, until the year 996 when Alhaken II, moved by religious pressure took the decission of
pulling up all vineyards.
When the decission of the Califa was announced, the people from Jerez said that the grapes were used to elaborate raisins in order to feed the Holy Land warriors. In this way they managed to save three thirds of the planted stocks.

THE RECONQUEST:
In the Christian Spain from the Reconquest, the culture of wine was not only maintained but extended due mainly to the monasteries. In the Kingdom of León, the benedictins monks from Cluny were the ones to take with themselves stocks to the Ribera del Duero. The Rioja wine that already existed as we have already mentioned, before the Roman occupation, was mentioned by Gonzalo de Berceo in the verses he wrote from his retirement in San Millán de la Cogolla monastery (the famous Glosas Emilianenses), considered as the origin of written Spanish.
The military religious order of Calatrava, that until 1584 governed the area where today are the vineyards of Valdepeñas, did also  a lot for the wines from this region, that in Philip the II times was consumed in Madrid (Royal Court).

As the Reconquest was  about going to be completed in Spain the cultivation of wine reached a tremendous development. By the river Duero banks, for example, the lands that were not occupied because of the fights between Romans and Christians became populated by farmers that cultivated only wine. In fact it?s a fact that in the XIII century there were already several wineries in the area.
Another important fact in the history of Spanish wine, specially in the Reconquest time, was te occupation of Jerez de la Frontera by king Alfonso X The Wise in 1264. The wines from Jerez, since the previous century were already sent to Britain by the Moslems. Because of that the English called Jerez wine- Sherish-, that was the Arab name of the town. From the moment onwards that the was reconquered its wines became more internationally famous, being wanted by the English, French and Flemish merchants. The spectacular demand provoke conflicts and in order to regulate the vintage, the maturing and the commercial use the “Orders
of the raisins and the vintage in Jerez” were promulgated, that are the first existing rules of this D.O.
The wines from Jerez are not the only ones to be submmited to legal custody. In many other regions in Spain rules were dictated to protect the quality of wines and defend the production. For example the King Alfonso X The Wise, in 1265 stablished the figure of the “vineyard guards”, whose function was to keep an eye on the vineyards three months previously to the vintage.