Campo de Criptana
Ciudad Real · Castilla–La Mancha
DO La Mancha12.868inhabitants
1162first mention
1575wine documented
A municipality of La Mancha known for its ridge of windmills. It arose around 1300 as the town of “El Campo”, under the Order of Santiago, which gradually absorbed the population of the hamlets of Criptana and Villajos and took its present name from them.
First mention: Royal diploma of January 1162 granting several towns to the Order of Saint John, among them Villajos and Criptana, written “Chitrana” (“haec quatuor villas chitrana, villa allios…”).
The legend
documented 1575 (Relaciones Topográficas); expansion of the vineyard in the late 19th centuryThree hundred thousand maravedís of wine among the windmills
On 1 December 1575 the residents of Campo de Criptana answered Philip II’s questionnaire and, when speaking of their income, recorded that wine was worth more than three hundred thousand maravedís a year. In that town of La Mancha, at the foot of the ridge of windmills, wheat, vine and olive lived side by side, the Mediterranean triad, and wine was already one of the town’s great sources of wealth. Centuries later, with the arrival of the railway and the cereal crisis of the 19th century, Criptana turned much of its grain land into vineyard, and it still keeps bodegas from that period that continue to make wine.
Alive today: Campo de Criptana is one of the municipalities on the La Mancha Wine Route and belongs to the DO La Mancha, the largest wine-growing area in Spain. Bodegas y Viñedos Castiblanque makes wine and welcomes visitors in a 19th-century bodega on Calle Isaac Peral, with tastings and harvest and must-making workshops.
Wineries and their wines
- Baldor Old Vines
- Baldor Syrah
- Ilex Airén
- Ilex Coupage
- Ilex Tinto
- Ilex Verdejo
- Solamente Blanco
- Solamente Tinto
Wine towns nearby