Canelones: Home to 50% of Uruguay wineries

The first immigrants to settle this department—as Uruguayan provinces are known—arrived mainly from the poorer parts of the north of Italy and western Spain (Galicia and the Basque country). They had made wine back home and when they arrived in Uruguay over 100 years ago most headed out on horseback looking for farmland a few hours from the port.

The land in Canelones was fertile—there was even an excess of nutrients—and it was easy to grow grapes. In fact it was easy to grow anything. But primarily the choice was a logistical one. If you grew wine in Canelones, it would be cheap and easy to transport it to the capital for consumption or to the port.

One winemaker I interviewed for this article recounted how his father proudly told his great grandmother, 102 years at the time, how the family winery was about to export wines “for the first time” to Europe. Only for her to retort waggishly that his grandfather had beaten him to it when he had exported wines to be consumed on the boats going back to the old country in the 1930s.

Canelones geographically wraps itself around the capital of Montevideo and even today it’s where most people live.

How many capitals—or major cities—of the world have a wine region so close to home? Another winemaker noted that Canelones could be compared to Napa Valley and its proximity to San Francisco.

Burgundy soil with a Bordeaux climate

Canelones shares the same parallel with Stellenbosch in South Africa between the 33rd and 34th parallels. Yet the wines of Canelones, and indeed of Uruguay, surprise drinkers with their marked difference to other South American and new world wines.

Argentina and Chile wines grow in high arid areas. They need to be tweaked to taste fresh and not syrupy. In Canelones, grapes grown in clay soils with an abundance of water and ocean breezes have a good natural acidity that doesn’t require correcting.

Studies have equated Canelones with Bordeaux in France, not Mendoza in Argentina. One winemaker told me that though geographically Uruguay wines are from the new world, culturally and in their style, Uruguayan wines closely resemble wines from the old continent.

The importance of tradition in Canelones wineries

The vast majority of wineries in Canelones are run by fourth and fifth generation winemakers. It’s not unusual to find siblings and their parents, now in their 80s and 90s (it must be the wine!), living on the same estate. Though women have always traditionally played an important role in rural families, today they have much more visibility in the industry.

One winemaker told me that the biggest difference in his fine wines produced in Canelones and exported to almost fifty countries is the effect of family. “We are wine cooks,” he said, and he ‘cooks’ like his father and his grandfather before him using the same traditions and recipes. Those traditions are what differentiates them from a winery just 10 km away with similar soils.

(Not all wineries in Canelones are located on clay soils. There are micro-terroirs. However the wines of Canelones are distinct from the wines grown in Camelo to the west and Maldonado to the east.)