Bodegas San Valero Historia:

Our wines

Bodegas San Valero is characterized by its constant innovation, respect for tradition and enological excellence, which are the three premises under which they produce their excellent wines.

A wide range of red, white, pink and sparkling wines where the land, traditional know-how, business experience over 70 years and the most modern control and production techniques are expressed with absolute clarity.

It is known that the Vine was already cultivated in Carignan in the 3rd century BC, when its inhabitants used to drink wine mixed with honey. Such an ancient activity, linked to the exceptionality of the land and the know-how of its people, has made the wines of Cariñena have enjoyed a well-deserved fame throughout history. In the Middle Ages the Kings of Aragon carried them on their travels and literature has used them in such remarkable works as Don Juan Tenorio.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the name of Cariñena already appeared in 1933 in the first statute of wine, in which the producing areas were mentioned that would later become protected designations of origin.

Cariñena is the oldest in Aragon and one of the first in Spain.

In those years the winegrowers depended on the big operators of the wine market to sell their crops and this caused them at times important economic failures. that is why in 1944 the former President of the former Brotherhood of farmers, Francisco Ruiz Cabrera, promoted the creation of a cooperative, the cooperative warehouse of Cariñena, which began to operate with 66 initial members. In 1948 the first ship was built,in 1951 the members were extended to 149 and in 1954 it was renamed the San Valero cooperative agricultural trade union Winery.

Initially the wines were marketed in bulk, but in 1957 the first studies were carried out to install a bottler, which was inaugurated in 1962.

Economic activity grew in such a way that in 1966 it promoted the creation of a credit union, the Rural Fund Santo Cristo de Santiago, which would operate for several decades until its integration into a larger cooperative group.

During all this time, the facilities did not stop growing to cater to a market that also did, until in 1978 a completely new winery was built outside the urban center of carignan and which suffered a major expansion in 2004, the last one so far.

The first commercial brands were Don Mendo (which alludes to another literary work in which the Carignan appears) and Monte Ducay, to which Marquis de Tosos would later join to form the historical trio of the winery, now expanded with new ranges and brands.

In 1982 the so-called “controlled harvest” was introduced, at which point the grapes were qualified and paid for quality parameters that were not limited to the degree of sweetness. The continuous improvement of quality is installed from that moment on as one of the corporate values, to which are added others like innovation or food security.

With the creation in 1984 of a new winery, Bodegas Gran Ducay, dedicated to the production of cava, the group Bodegas San Valero was born.,
it currently has 700 partners whose products are present in more than 20 countries.