There are over 40.000 Hectares of vineyards in Andalucia. Over half of the Wine in Andalucia is produced in four "Denominación de Origen" areas (equivalent to France's Appellation d'origine controllée).

Jerez
Andalucia produces one of the most famous wines in the world, Sherry, grown in the area around Jerez de la Frontera and Sanlúcar de Barrameda in the province of Cádiz

Malaga and Sierras de Malaga
Traditionally the sweet Malaga desert wines additionally a handful of innovative vintners who are now producing interesting red table wines in the Sierras de Malaga mainly around Ronda in the Province of Malaga

Montilla Moriles
Traditionally sweet desert wines and fortified wines but nowadays also includes a wider range of production from this area in Cordoba province.

Condado de Huelva
A selection of dry and sweet white wines from Huelva province.

In addition to the above there are several smaller wine making districts called "Comarcas Vinícolas".

In the Beginning

Nobody knows when wine-making was first introduced to Andalusia. It could have been brought there by the Greeks 2,500 years ago or even earlier, by seafaring Phoenician traders from the east. What we do know for sure is that by the time of the Romans wine was being made in Andalusia in a big way, and the activity has continued more or less uninterruptedly ever since. Wine was appreciated even during the centuries of Moorish domination: the Koran frowns on the consumption of alcohol, but the Moors made wine and imbibed it with gusto, for "medicinal" purposes. They even introduced the technique of distilling into Spain. The Spanish word for still, alambique, is Arabic in origin, as is the English and Spanish word, "alcohol".

From the 15th century onwards, Andalusian wines were shipped to appreciative drinkers elsewhere in Europe, particularly England, where there was a great fondness for Sack (as Sherry was called) and sweet wines from Málaga. This happy situation prevailed until the 19th century when European vineyards were affected by oidium (a fungus), followed by an even more devastating plague of Phylloxera, the American vine root louse, which first appeared in Bordeaux in 1868 and spread to Jerez and Málaga 20 years later. Jerez's vineyards were replanted with plague-resistant American rootstock, but some areas never fully recovered.