Roussillon and northern Catalonia: large area of land …
… With a very great variety in geography, a real theater opened on the sunny beaches of the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by the mountains of the south and da Albères the Pyrenees. As in Burgundy, the grape varieties to thrive are an infinite number of soils and microclimates that provide all the uniqueness of the wines of Château Planers
North Catalonia: the Roussillon wine
Culture of the vine in Roussillon
Its history goes back far into the past. Present in the region five centuries before Christ Ch, the vine has been developed by the Greeks and Romans. The name of Roussillon would also Ruscino City, the former regional capital of the Romans enlarged in the 1st century BC. As elsewhere in the South, the culture of the vine has spread over centuries worn by the Roman occupation and from the eighth century around the monasteries.
A military religious order, the Knights of the Militia of the Temple (the Templars), founded in 1119 and settled in Catalonia in order to fight against Muslims, was probably the cause of fortified wines. Holders of profound scientific and esoteric Mozarabic drawn from civilization, they mastered the use of alcohol and probably the technique of fortification is to say, the addition of alcohol to wine fermenting to keep the residual sugar and make it suitable for conservation. The authorship of this process is officially attributed to Armand de Vilanova (1238-1311) theologian, alchemist and physician, who holds a chair at Montpellier. The city was part of the Kingdom of Majorca (1276 -1344) whose capital was Perpignan and that included the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Valencia, Aragon, the Capcir, Cerdagne and Roussillon who knew her age at the time of gold. Her weavings and wines were then exported to Flanders and England. Later, in northern Catalonia (Roussillon) became an object of contention between Castile and France. Following the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) it was annexed to the kingdom of France. Curiously, at the court of Versailles, the wines of Roussillon, which were much appreciated continued to be served as Spanish wines. After a long period of economic decline viticulture developed particularly strongly from 1858, where the connection of the railroad allowed the Roussillon to open the rest of France and thus to find outlets for its wines. Wines were produced to meet the growing demand of the masses of the urban centers of northern France. Viticulture production-so that the father of cyclical crises of overproduction, especially after the reconstitution of vineyards with vines grafted following the damage caused by an aphid, Phylloxera vastatrix which attacks the roots of the vines from Europe
