The Original Pajarete Wine of Andalusia

Abstract

The present work is focused on the original area of the sweet liqueur wine known as Pajarete (Paxarete in ancient texts). Its name comes from a hill located in the municipality of Villamartín, in the northern Sierra of the province of Cádiz (Andalusia, Spain), which is crowned by a fortress of Muslim origin. The Pajarete vineyard practically disappeared between the last decade of the XIX century and the First World War, due to the phylloxera infestation, and also occupied part of the territory of the neighboring town of Prado del Rey. There was not a general reconstruction of the vineyard on rootstocks of North American origin, given the smallholder nature of its plots, although local consumption was maintained. This was focused, mainly, on the production of white wines of the year, known as musts (Mostos). This paper contains a bibliographic review of this type of wine, which reached international fame during the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries, and a tasting note. Likewise, the main varieties of grapevine used for its production are cited, according to the study published in 1807 by Simón de Roxas Clemente y Rubio, a character of which a short bibliographic review is included.