Page 49 - Grapevine July-August 2015

International News

under the radar until the 1980’s. Some viticulturists began to dominate exports and government reve-
believe that this later than average development was nues.
to do with soil conditions. Venezuela is a tropical
country where the soil composition works best with If we take a closer look at its corporate infrastruc-
specific grape variants making large-scale wine ture we can clearly see that Venezuela is certainly
production a problem. Venezuela has not become no stranger to controversy. There has been an ongo-
a major wine producer because the need for big ing battleground of political reform amidst greater
temperature variations and exacting soil conditions or worse failed economic policies with sanctions
has always limited the large-scale production of already imposed by the U.S. All of this has taken
fine wine to locations that are at least thirty degrees the country on something of a detour in its more
north of the equator, or at least thirty degrees south recent history. There have been many twists and
of the equator. That worked fine for countries like turns along the way for Venezuela, and none more
Argentina, Chile or South Africa, but not tropical so than with what we have seen recently in 2015.
nations like Venezuela, which by the early 1980’s Frayed relations between Venezuela and the U.S.
was producing only about a million cases of wine have intensified during the O’Bama administration,
annually from imported concentrated must. Things causing a virtual stand off and a near coup between
began changing in 1986 when Polar and Martell the two countries. This fault line has brought
joined forces and founded Bodegas Pomar billed as Venezuela to the edge of a new frontier in its long
the first enterprise to
produce wine on a
commercial scale in
Venezuela. The wine
is made from grapes
of its own vineyards
planted in Altagracia
in the state of Lara.

Being one of the
most urbanized
countries in Latin
America, most of
the population of
Venezuela’s thirty
million inhabitants
live in the northern
cities, and especial-
ly in the capital of
Caracas. Venezuela
also has some of the
world’s largest oil
reserves and has been
one of the world’s
leading exporters of
oil. The exporting
of other agricultural
commodities such
as coffee and cocoa
were superseded by
oil which quickly

877-892-5332 The Grapevine • July - August 2015 Page 47