A town in the Campiña del Pisuerga (Valladolid) that gives its name to the DO Cigales, famous for its claretes and its underground cellars. There are Vaccaean remains within its boundaries; the town appears in documents from the 12th century and enjoyed its heyday in the 16th.
vineyards documented in the district since the 10th century; boom with the Court in Valladolid (1601–1606) until phylloxera; DO in 1991The clarete of the Court and the bodega quarter of Cigales
The Pisuerga valley already had vineyard owners in the 10th century, in neighbouring hamlets such as Cubillas and Corcos, when the monasteries of the resettlement planted vines to root the settlers to the land: a vineyard took years to bear fruit and obliged people to stay. Cigales' great moment came in 1601, when Philip III installed the Court in Valladolid and the town became the capital's wine cellar; its clarete, a blend of red and white grapes, also travelled north and to León. Until the end of the 20th century all the wine was made in the bodegas dug into the slopes around the village, each with its vent or zarcera on the hillside, and popular tradition boasts that Cigales clarete was served at the royal table.
Alive today: Cigales gives its name to the DO Cigales (1991), seat of its Regulatory Council, famous for its rosés and claretes. Every September it holds the Fiesta de la Vendimia, declared of Regional Tourist Interest, which in 2026 reached its 46th edition with popular tastings. It preserves its quarter of underground bodegas and bodegas such as Frutos Villar (1960).