Història dels orígens de la carinyena

Abstract

Carinyena is a variety of red grape which has been cultivated for centuries in Catalonia and in the area of the former Catalan-Aragonese Crown. The documentation found to date presents some medieval quotes referring to Carinyena wine without specifying if it is a wine coming from a vine called Carinyena or from the village of Cariñena. At the end of the 18th century, there appear documents from various places with different names considered to be synonyms of the Carinyena vine, such asCrujillon in the region of Cariñena, Carinyena in Catalonia, Caranyana in the French Catalonia and the Empordà region, Mazuela in La Rioja and Navarre and Carignan in Occitania. It is surprising that precisely in Cariñena it was called Crujillon. This simultaneous apparition of documents and names in different locations makes it difficult to clearly determine the specific location of its origin. Numerous authors concur in locating it in the Aragonese village of Cariñena but it is not clear what this vine was called there. Moreover, this variety has been cultivated very little in Cariñena for many de- cades and between the 18th and 21st centuries the fame of its wine has been based on Grenache, which replaced the Crujillon or Carinyena grapes. Other authors place the origins of the variety in the Occitan locality of Carignan, but this does not seem very probable since French ampelographers concur in locating its origins in Spain and many of them specify the town of Cariñena. Lastly, Samsó has emerged as a possible synonym of Carinyena in Catalonia. It has been attempted to establish this theory but it is difficult to accept since the name Samsó does not appear until the end of the 20th century in the documentation which has been studied and various philologists and other experts believe this name comes from the French red grape variety called Cinsaut; the fact that some wines mistakenly labelled with the name Samsó today belong to the Carinyena variety may be due to a confusion. We conclude that the variety has been found in Catalonia and in the territories of the former Crown of Aragon since the Middle Ages, that it is historically autochthonous in this territory, and that the name of the Carinyena vine should not be considered to bear a relation to the village of that name since the only place where the variety is called Carinyena is Catalonia.