Chief town of the Vall de Pop (Marina Alta), a Mudéjar and Morisco valley ('vallis de Xalo') resettled with people from Majorca and Ibiza after the settlement charter of 1611.
raisins documented 1472; settlement charter 1611; Riko 1921; cooperative 1962A hundred quintals of raisins from the vall de Xaló (1472)
In 1472 the alamín of the vall de Xaló, head of the Mudéjar community, appears in a document selling a hundred quintals of raisins from the valley: it is the oldest written trace of a calling that was never lost. With the Moriscos expelled in 1609, the settlement charter of 1611 brought settlers from Majorca and Ibiza. From 1818, as prices rose, Xaló filled with moscatel for raisins, shipped out through Dénia and Xàbia; powdery mildew, droughts and phylloxera later drove many inhabitants to emigrate to Algeria. From that world came the family winery that is today Bodegas Riko, with origins in 1921, and the Virgen Pobre cooperative, founded in 1962 by fourteen farmers.
Alive today: Cooperativa Bodegas Xaló (more than 400 members), Bodegas Riko, riuraus and the vineyards of the Vall de Pop