About Colección 125

The Colección 125 wine range was first launched in 1985 to commemorate with the most exclusive wine range, the 125 year anniversary of the first export of Bodegas Chivite back in 1860.  Though 1860 coincided with the fairly stable period of Queen Isabel in social and political terms in Spain, the same could not be said for the French wine trade.  Their vineyards suffered from a plague of oidium with a worrying fall in production.  This was exploited by Claudio Chivite who decided to export his wines there.  Having inherited the old family winery in Caballeros Street, he showed himself at that time to be astutely knowledgeable in striking commercial deals.  His eye for business and a certain flair for risk-taking led him to work as what nowadays is called a collector of taxes, which traders and producers had to pay for any wine they imported or sold in the Cintruénigo (Navarra) region.

While wine in Spain was witnessing the beginning of a period of flourishing wine trading with France, Claudio Chivite became the chief promoter of the Cintruénigo-Bayonne-Bordeaux transfer, which could move at one go large numbers of 600-litre casks.  In one of the 1870 invoices still kept appears the price of 17 reales per “cantara” of wine (16 litre measure).