Resumen

LACOSTE, Pablo. PARRALES, BRACEROS Y CEPAS DE CABEZA: EL ARTE DE CULTIVAR LA VIÑA EN MENDOZA Y SAN JUAN (1561-1869). Historia (Santiago) [online]. 2010, vol.43, n.1, pp. 5-40. ISSN 0717-7194.  doi: 10.4067/S0717-71942010000100001.

Parrales, braceros and gobelet were the three most utilized methods to cultivate grapevines in Mendoza and San Juan, since the founding of the capital of Cuyo Province in Chile´s Reign. These methods prevailed from the Spanish conquest of the area, in 1561, until the impact of French-like methods in Argentina’s vine-growing in the 1870s. This topic is relevant because Argentina is today the main wine producer in Latin America and the fifth largest producer in the world. This work has been prepared based on original sources from archives located in Mendoza, San Juan and Santiago, with the processing of more than 400,000 data regarding vineyards, vines and stocks of wine. This study demonstrates that 97 percent of the stocks of wine were cultivated in vineyards and only 3 percent by using parrales encatrados. Among the former, three fourths used the sistema de vaso, gobelet or cepas de cabeza, as it was called in America; The rest used an embracerado system, where vine shoots were led with willow and poplar sticks. In general, black grapes were cultivated with cepas de cabeza and muscatel wine using the bracero or parral encatrado system.

Palabras clave : Handmade Vine-Growing; Colonial Vine-Growing; Wine Industry; Vineyards; Parrales.