page_title: Viña Varela Zarranz
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Viña Varela Zarranz / History
caption_attribution_description: Español: Casona Antigua en 1895
context_page_description: Viña Varela Zarranz is one of the oldest and most famous wineries of Uruguay, located in the city of Joaquín Suarez, Canelones. The Varela Zarranz family began their activities at the wine industry in 1933, a decade after the warehouse facility was built in 1888 by Diego Pons, who started the pioneer of the Uruguayan viticulture: Harriague, Vidiella, Varzi and Portal.
context_section_description: The history of the property dates back to the late nineteenth century. Until then, there were small-scale vineyards and the wine was made by European immigrants who occupied the area, using traditional methods and only for family consumption. In 1888 Diego Pons acquired plots of land and in the spring of that year he introduced its first vines, following the advice of his friend Francisco Vidiella, who recommended Pons on using lands for vineyards and associated crops.
  In 1892 he ordered the construction of the winery and wine cellar of the establishment. The cellar, with stone walls of two feet wide, maintained the conditions of constant temperature and humidity. Featuring a very modern facility for the time, it had two hydraulic presses, fermentation vats of concrete and 42 large oak barrels purchased in the workshops of Adolphe Fruhinsholz at Nancy (France). They were brought from France unarmed and each of its parts (called staves). It had been recorded the year they were built next to the signature of the manufacturer and a numbered brand that allowed to join them again. It's a unique collection in the country, which fascinates for its quantity and quality of conservation which coexists with modern French and American oak barrels where the best wines have their upbringing. The winery had attached a building for the production of olive oil. He also planted many olive trees, which most of them are still in perfect conditions with more than 100 years of age. They are represented on a flanking olive way access of about 200 meters.
  Other treasures were preserved until today like a diary written in ink by its founder, which was written in every day since he bought the land of how to plant the vines, how he began to build the house, the cellar, the first wines were made and stood out in his notes that the Cabernet was the king of his cellar. This journal contains several years of history and comes to the earliest XX.
  By the late nineteenth century, the Pons farm had about 400 has -in the town of Suarez, Canelones Department- of which 87 were intended to vineyards and the rest to olive groves. The 400,000 feet of vineyard belonged to a wide variety of strains, predominantly Harriague and Vidiella. The average production on Pons farm was about 870,000 kilos of grapes and 600,000 liters of wine annually. The Italian winemaker A. N. Galanti, who visited the company by 1915, referred to the quality of their wines which had earned several awards in national and international exhibitions: Bordeaux (silver medal, 1895), Brussels (honor diploma, 1910). They received several gold medals at exhibitions in Turin (1902), Athens (1903), Milan (1906), Minas (1904), Paris (1905) and Rome (Italy Ministry of Agriculture, 1906) among others.
  In 1944, when Pons was 80 years old, he decided to sell his winery to the Varela's family. Since he had no family interested in continuing with the wine industry, Pons wanted to sell his property to someone who valued and continued this activity to which he devoted most of his life to. Varela 's family was at the time engaged in the wine farm and was looking to expand.
caption: Old House in 1895
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