\u201cLet me show you a house built five centuries before Christ.\u201d I let out a chuckle at the nonchalance of my tour guide\u2019s unironic directive. Five centuries! Before Christ! But this is Menorca<\/a>, where you can rendezvous with the ancient world after a pintxo picnic beneath a wild olive tree. Another thing you can do in Menorca: drink local wine, which is precisely why I traveled to the Balearic island this past April. Unlike other Mediterranean destinations praised for their wine scenes (Catalonia, Sicily, Provence), Menorca has kept out of the spotlight. But I\u2019d wager that\u2019s about to change.<\/p>\n To understand wine\u2019s context in Menorcan culture, you have to rewind a bit (a couple thousand years, give or take). \u201cWhen we speak about wine in Menorca, we are not only speaking about a drink,\u201d Menorca Discovery<\/a> owner Gonzalo Lopez tells me. Trade, agriculture, travel, and celebration are all part of wine\u2019s timeline on the island. He offers an example connected to the Balearic Slingers. These \u2018slingers\u2019 were mercenaries for Carthaginian and later Roman armies who were capable of hurling stones over 100 miles per hour. \u201cThere are historical references suggesting that these warriors were paid with coins, but that they spent their earnings on wine,\u201d Lopez says. Over time, the story evolved that they ditched the coins and simply opted for payment in wine. \u201cWhether taken literally or as a reflection of ancient habits, it says a lot about how important wine already was in Mediterranean life<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: Andrew Ling<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Archaeology also telegraphs wine\u2019s story on the island, Lopez continues. \u201cAmphora fragments found in prehistoric and Roman sites, as well as amphoras recovered from shipwrecks show how Menorca was connected to ancient wine trade routes.\u201d Wine was arriving from places such as Campania, Catalonia, and throughout the western Mediterranean. As time passed, it became further ingrained in local life. \u201cFor centuries, many families had small vineyards, and wine formed part of the rural landscape of the island,\u201d Lopez says. This all came to a screeching halt with the arrival of phylloxera\u2014a microscopic pest that infamously wiped out around two-thirds of the world\u2019s vineyards between the 1860s and 1890s (accidentally brought over by, sigh<\/em>, North America).<\/p>\n Menorca\u2019s recovery from phylloxera has been slow but steady, gaining notable traction in recent decades. \u201cToday, wine is becoming once again part of the island\u2019s gastronomic identity, together with cheese, olive oil, and other local products,\u201d Lopez explains. The volume is much smaller compared to other Mediterranean wine regions<\/a>, but Lopez suggests it\u2019s moved in a direction that\u2019s more professional and quality-focused. \u201cMenorca cannot compete with large wine regions in quantity, and it should not try to,\u201d he says. \u201cThe strength of Menorcan wine is precisely its limited production, its character, and its connection to a very specific landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n This distinct landscape that Lopez refers to is designated as a Biosphere Reserve<\/a>. This was made possible, I\u2019m told, by an unlikely source: the Franco dictatorship. Menorca was one of the last Republican holdouts of the Spanish Civil War, and as punishment, Franco kept the island under tight military control, starving it of the development that would eventually transform its neighbors into mass tourism destinations. The end result for Menorca? A spectacularly unspoiled habitat. And thankfully, the rising generation of wine producers on Menorca is determined to keep it that way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/assets.vogue.com\/photos\/6a15fd03858ea24069bf3035\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/ANDREW%2520LING%2520-%2520Fontenille%2520Menorca%2520Final%2520Selects-17.jpg\"\/)
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