The Rise and Secularization of Viticulture in Mendoza: The Godoy Family Contribution, 1700-1831

The Rise and Secularization of Viticulture in Mendoza:

The Godoy Family Contribution, 1700-1831

The Mendoza wine industry, currently the largest in Latin America and fifth largest in the world, is the inheritor of an almost 500 year-long process of evolution in the cultivation of grape vines and the development of wine making. The most studied period of its history corresponds to the construction of British railroads and the tremendous wave of Italian, Spanish and French immigration that began in the 1880s.¹ Prior to the modern period, however, there was a traditional period in the Argentine wine industry, characterized by artisan production and ecclesiastical control. In the mid-nineteenth century, members of the clergy and religious groups controlled nearly 80 percent of the wine industry in Mendoza. This article examines the origins of viticulture in Mendoza, with particular reference to the influence of the clergy, and the subsequent secularization of the wine industry. At the same time, it discusses the role that the Godoy family played in the rise and consolidation of the wine making and its separation from ecclesiastical control.

Tomás Godoy Cruz and his cousin, Juan Alberto Godoy, cultivated grapes and played important roles in sociopolitical struggles of their times. Juan Alberto Godoy founded newspapers, wrote satiric poems and fought several ideological battles as a proponent of the new republican ideas that emerged in the context of the 1810 Revolution. Tomás Godoy Cruz was an important political leader who worked on behalf of the campaigns of José de San Martin and Bernardo O'Higgins. He also led the pro-independence faction in the Congress of Tucumán, which culminated in the declaration of Independence in 1816. Both men supported the Army of the Andes that liberated Chile and Perú and they participated in the creation of the new government that aimed to overcome the traditionalism of the colonial period by inculcating liberal and republican conceptions of life and the State. Like these two emblematic figures, other members of the Godoy family played a predominant role in the region from the end of the seventeenth until the beginning of the nineteenth century. For five generations, the Godoys had advanced by concentrating on economic activities based on intensive agriculture, investment, and innovation.

In researching this article, both published and unpublished sources were consulted. Among the latter were the documentary sources available at the Archivo Histórico de Mendoza and the Archivo Nacional de Chile, particularly litigation involving participants in the wine industry and their wills. Of the edited documents consulted, several had been published without the aid of information that would make it possible to understand their historical context. For example, several biographies concerning the public life of Tomás Godoy Cruz that emphasize his participation in government have been published along with documents that list his possessions (1831).² His great grandfather's will has also been published (1704).³ However, these documents have not been discussed together, nor have they been compared to the wills of the other members of the Godoy family, and those of don Clemente Godoy's (1744) and Juan Godoy del Castillo's (1747) in particular. This paper therefore makes significant reference to these sources, as well as unpublished documents.

Mendoza and the Wine Industry

Mendoza became an early center of industrial wine production. The first vine-stocks arrived in the second half of the sixteenth century and shortly thereafter, the first wineries were built. In the seventeenth century, 100,000 vines were under cultivation and five wineries were in operation. With a population of only 8,000 inhabitants in the years 1750-1775, Mendoza boasted of 650,000 vines and more than 40 wineries that produced more than 1,000,000 liters of wine and aguardiente per year.⁴

The vine-stocks in colonial Mendoza were not of especially good quality. The fruit of these vines, which originated in...