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Pedro Ximénez grape origin in Montilla-Moriles: white bunches drying on esparto mats in afternoon sun beside a whitewashed bodega wall, Córdoba province

Pedro Ximénez Grape: Rhine Soldier Legend or Moorish DNA?

Is the Pedro Ximénez grape from the Rhine? A Charles V soldier legend, a 2007 DNA study pointing to Gibi, and what the Córdoba province deeds of 1574 show.

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Seven years covering Córdoba's gastronomy, taberna culture, and the Montilla-Moriles DO.

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Early modern1492–1808
The verdict in one line: the Rhine soldier story is unsupported, the Gibi parentage points south, and the origin of the name is still unsolved. Pedro Ximénez is a white Spanish wine grape[1], and also the name of the very sweet wine made from it around Montilla, in Córdoba province. A 2007 study in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture (58:540-543) names the old grape Gibi as a probable parent[2]; two teams worked on it in parallel, Vargas et al. (IMIDRA, El Encín, Madrid)[3] and Laucou et al. (INRA Montpellier)[4]. The Moorish link often attached to that result is an older attribution. It does not come from the study.
Early modern1492–1808
Matched in Corinto bianco
25 loci
Identical microsatellite profiles in Pedro Ximénez and its seedless mutation[5]
Córdoba PX vineyards
5,000 ha
Spain's largest Pedro Ximénez area, ahead of Málaga and Cádiz (MAPA 2019)[6]
Minimum sugar in asoleo must
450 g/L
Montilla-Moriles specification for sun-dried Pedro Ximénez, reducing sugars[7]

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The Rhine soldier story and its competing versions

The Rhine story exists in several versions, and none rests on a document from the period. In the commonest telling, a Spanish soldier called Pedro Ximén served Charles V in the Netherlands, collected vine cuttings and carried them south[8].
Retellings give him the German name Peter Siemens[9], which sounds like evidence and is not. The other versions disagree with it and with each other:
  • The soldier: Pedro Ximén, home from Charles V's wars in Flanders with cuttings in his baggage.
  • Merula, 1636: Cosmografía, printed in Amsterdam, credits the vine to a certain Pedro, son of Simón[10].
  • Sachs, 1661: the German ampelographer Philip Jacob Sachs von Lewenheim claimed the grape began in Madeira or the Canary Islands and reached the Rhine later[11].
Many 19th-century ampelography works repeated the three theories behind a German origin[12], which is how a legend hardened into textbook fact.
The trail itself is thin: the information comes second-hand from writers of the 18th and 19th centuries quoting earlier authors, not from primary sources[13].

What the DNA says about the plant

Gibi, an old white table grape of the south, is the best lead on the plant's parentage: the 2007 analysis names it as a probable parent of Pedro Ximénez and leaves the other parent unknown[14].
That points away from the Rhine, though less far than the headlines suggest. The Arab introduction is a separate and older claim. Pierre Galet, a French ampelographer[15], gave it in his 2000 Dictionnaire encyclopédique des cépages[16], "following Magnol": Gibi, he writes, came to Spain with the Arabs[17].
More recent genetic work describes Pedro Ximénez as a descendant of Gibi, probably introduced in the Al-Andalus period[18]. Keep the two claims apart: the 2007 abstract deals in parentage, not Moors. Galet attributes the Arab introduction to Magnol, and the abstract does not address it.
Gibi is also a parent of Alarije from Extremadura, which makes that variety a half-sibling of Pedro Ximénez[19]. Corinto bianco, the seedless grape that is a mutation of Pedro Ximénez, matches it at 25 microsatellite loci[5], so the identification of the plant is firm even while its parentage stays probable.
The Rhine candidates also fail the eye test. Juan Portero, author of the source text, set Rojas Clemente's 1807 description of the grape beside the Elbling and Riesling entries in French and Rhine ampelographies, Stoltz's among them, and found the differences manifest[20]. That is the most practical argument against the legend: it rests on vines a grower can look at, not on a name. A southern origin sits easily with where the grape thrives today, in the vineyards south of Córdoba that produce Montilla-Moriles wine.

The paper trail from 1483 to 1618 and what it leaves out

The name is the part nobody has solved. Research has narrowed down where the plant comes from, but the origin of the name is still left to legends[22]. The dated traces, in order:
  • 1483: the Jerez harvest ordinances do not mention Pedro Ximénez[23].
  • 3 April 1574: a Montilla notarial deed covers 25 loads of grapes marked PºXz, possibly the oldest document to use the current Castilian name[24].
  • 11 September 1577: another Montilla deed sells 100 arrobas of must made separately from Pedro Ximénez and Baladí grapes to the Augustinian convent in Córdoba[25].
  • 1609: an Amsterdam wine price list found by the historian Mariella Beukers is read as already naming a wine Pieter Cemeynes, a Dutch trail that rivals the Rhine one[26].
  • 1618: Vicente Espinel's Marcos de Obregón has a squire hand beggars a skin of Pedro Jimenez de Málaga[27][28].
The Montilla deeds may be the earliest paper to use the grape's current Castilian name, and they predate Espinel's Málaga reference by more than four decades. A regulation that omits a grape proves little, and a Dutch price list proves a name, not a soldier. The 1577 deed is the more telling of the two, because it shows Pedro Ximénez already being vinified on its own, apart from Baladí, for a buyer in Córdoba. None of these documents says who Pedro Ximén was, which is exactly the gap the Rhine legend fills.
Glasses of Montilla-Moriles fino and Pedro Ximénez wines

Taste of Córdoba · Dish

Montilla-Moriles

Córdoba's own wine: Pedro Ximénez grapes on white limestone, producing finos, amontillados and rich sweet wines without fortification. Taste them here.

Wine in Andalusia is older than any soldier of Charles V. The Roman wine found at Carmona shows how deep that earlier record runs.

Pedro Ximénez in Montilla-Moriles today

In Córdoba province the grape is the backbone of the appellation: it covers about 95% of the designation's vineyard land[29], under roughly 3,000 effective sun hours a year[30]. That heat is why the fruit is dried before pressing, and why the official specification is a better guide to what a bottle of PX contains than any folklore. It pins down three things:
Flamenquín cordobés history: a golden crispy fried pork roll on a rustic ceramic plate at a traditional Córdoba taberna, sliced open to reveal the jamón serrano filling, natural Andalusian light on a stone counter

Deep dive · Article

A 1908 Córdoba Ad Offered Flamenquín. Is It the Dish We Eat Now?

The word flamenquín appears in a Córdoba newspaper in 1908; the only dated recipe story is Andújar 1939. What the record proves, and why both towns claim it.

  • Grape content: a wine sold as Pedro Ximénez must come from at least 95% Pedro Ximénez grapes[31].
  • Sun-drying (asoleo): the cut grapes are exposed to the sun until the must holds at least 450 g/L of reducing sugars[7].
  • Yield: an asoleo wine may not exceed 40 litres of wine per 100 kg of harvested grapes[32].
Traditionally the selected bunches are spread on esparto or a similar material in drying plots[33]. To taste the result, the guides to traditional bodegas and tabernas and Córdoba's wine bars show where a glass is poured by people who know the barrels. In spring, a cold fino beside alcachofas a la montillana, artichokes braised in Montilla wine, makes the local logic obvious.

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The appellation is younger than the grape's paper trail. Bureaucratic problems during the Civil War delayed the Consejo Regulador until 1944[34], but the wines had been officially recognised earlier, by the 1932 Estatuto de la Viña y el Vino, which took force of law in 1933[35]. The name on the bottle is older than that recognition by about 360 years.
So which story wins? The soldier is folklore with a German paper trail and no archive behind it, Gibi is a laboratory lead, and the Montilla deeds are early paper with no author's name attached. Until someone finds Pedro Ximén in a notary's file, the grape is southern by parentage and anonymous by name.

Frequently asked questions

Is Pedro Ximénez a grape?
Yes. Pedro Ximénez, often shortened to PX, is a white Vitis vinifera wine grape from Spain. The same name is used for the very sweet wine made from it, especially in Montilla-Moriles in Córdoba province.

Is Pedro Ximénez a white grape?
Yes, the berry is white-skinned. The sweet wine looks almost black because of sun-drying and ageing, so the colour in the glass says nothing about the colour of the grape.

What is Pedro Ximénez?
Two things under one name: a white grape, and the intensely sweet wine made from it. In Montilla-Moriles the wine comes from grapes dried in the sun (asoleo), which gives a must far sweeter than ordinary grape juice, and the specification sets a minimum for its sugar.

What is the Pedro Ximénez grape origin: the Rhine or southern Spain?
The Rhine version is a legend with no primary document behind it. The best genetic lead, a 2007 parentage analysis, names Gibi, an old southern table grape, as a probable parent, which points to southern Spain, while the origin of the name remains open.

Who was Pedro Ximén, the soldier in the legend?
Nobody has identified him. Retellings give him the German name Peter Siemens and place him in Charles V's service in the Netherlands, but the story reaches us only second-hand, through later writers quoting earlier ones.

Does Jerez use Pedro Ximénez from Montilla-Moriles?
Reportedly, yes. Jerez producers can buy in Pedro Ximénez from Montilla-Moriles[36].

Sources

36 references Show
  1. Wikipedia — Pedro Ximénez (opens in a new tab)

    “Pedro Ximénez (also known as PX and many other variations; Andalusian pronunciation [ˌpeðrohiˈmene]) is a white Spanish wine grape variety”

  2. ajevonline.org (opens in a new tab)

    “Parentage analysis revealed the cultivar Gibi as a probable parent of Pedro Ximenes.”

  3. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “El trabajo lo realizaron dos equipos en paralelo: uno encabezado por Alba María Vargas et al. (investigadores del IMIDRA) en la finca El Encín (Madrid)”

  4. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “y el otro por Valérie Laucou et al. (investigadores de UMR DiaPC) del Equipo Vigne INRA Montpellier.”

  5. ajevonline.org (opens in a new tab)

    “identical DNA profiles were observed in both varieties for 25 microsatellite loci.”

  6. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “La provincia de Córdoba era la de mayor extensión con 5 000 hectáreas de viña plantada con la cepa Pº Xz, seguida de Málaga y Cádiz.”

  7. montillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Esta deshidratación parcial de las bayas da lugar a un mosto con una mayor concentración de azúcares reductores en conjunto, como mínimo de 450 gramos por litro.”

  8. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Pudiera ser que Pedro Ximénez fuera un soldado del rey Carlos I enrolado en los Tercios de Flandes que, de regreso a su patria, hubiese traído sarmientos”

  9. sherrynotes.com (opens in a new tab)

    “It is there that they were picked up by a Spanish soldier Pedro Ximén (Peter Siemens in German) after serving Charles V in The Netherlands.”

  10. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Merula, en su Cosmografía editada en Ámsterdam en 1636, escribió “que trajo a España este vidueño un tal Pedro hijo de Simón”.”

  11. sherrynotes.com (opens in a new tab)

    “In 1661 a German ampelographer Philip Jacob Sachs von Lewenheim claimed the grape originated in Madeira or the Canary Islands.”

  12. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Estas son las tres teorías que fundamentan el origen alemán de la cepa Pedro Ximénez, las cuales fueron reflejadas en muchos trabajos de ampelografía del siglo XIX”

  13. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Esta información no proviene directamente de las fuentes, sino de escritores de los siglos XVIII y XIX que citaban a otros autores anteriores.”

  14. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Del análisis de los resultados se llegó a la conclusión del posible parentesco de la variedad Gibi como progenitor (madre) de la cepa Pedro Ximénez, aunque se desconoce el padre.”

  15. Wikipedia — Pierre Galet (opens in a new tab)

    “was a French ampelographer and author who was an influential figure within ampelography in the 20th century”

  16. Wikipedia — Pierre Galet (opens in a new tab)

    “In 2000, Galet released Dictionnaire encyclopédique des cépages, a comprehensive catalog of grape varieties from across the globe including their international synonyms.”

  17. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “la Gibi es una antigua uva de mesa blanca meridional que habría venido a España, según Magnol, traída por los árabes”

  18. noticiasdelvino.com (opens in a new tab)

    “Análisis genéticos recientes la identifican como descendiente de una antigua uva de mesa conocida como Gibi, introducida probablemente durante el periodo de Al-Ándalus.”

  19. Wikipedia — Pedro Ximénez (opens in a new tab)

    “Gibi was also discovered to be one of the parent varieties of the Extremadura wine grape Alarije, making the later variety a half-sibling to Pedro Ximénez.”

  20. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “debemos comparar la descripción hecha por Rojas Clemente sobre la Pedro Ximénez con la que hizo J. L. Stoltz en su Ampélographie Rhénane”

  21. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “comparte solo el 38% con la variedad Pedro Giménez de Argentina”

  22. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Las investigaciones realizadas han encauzado la procedencia de la planta. Queda por concretar el origen del nombre, que aún permanece sujeto a diferentes leyendas.”

  23. sherrynotes.com (opens in a new tab)

    “In any case the famous Ordenanzas del vino, an early regulation of the grape harvest in Jerez (1483), doesn’t mention the Pedro Ximénez grape.”

  24. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Podrían ser los documentos más antiguos y los primeros en los que se hacía referencia a este vidueño con el nombre actual en castellano.”

  25. welovemontillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Una fechada el 11 de septiembre de 1577, en la que se acordaba una venta de 100 arrobas de vino elaborado por separado con uva Pedro Ximénez y Baladí.”

  26. sherrynotes.com (opens in a new tab)

    “Just a few years ago Mariella Beukers (in her book Wijnkronieken) discovered a pricelist used in the Amsterdam wine market in 1609.”

  27. sherrynotes.com (opens in a new tab)

    “The oldest Spanish mention of the grape dates back to 1618.”

  28. gutenberg.org (opens in a new tab)

    “alarguéles una bota de Pedro Jimenez de Málaga”

  29. upo.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Esta variedad cubre el 95% de los terrenos”

  30. montillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Las horas de sol efectivo se sitúan en torno a las 3000 por año.”

  31. montillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “En su elaboración se exige que el 95% de la uva sea de la variedad “Pedro Ximénez”.”

  32. montillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “el rendimiento no podrá superar en ningún caso los 40 litros de vino por cada 100 kilogramos de uva vendimiada”

  33. noticiasdelvino.com (opens in a new tab)

    “Los racimos seleccionados se depositan en parcelas de secado donde se extienden sobre esparto o material similar.”

  34. upo.es (opens in a new tab)

    “Los problemas burocráticos durante la Guerra Civil provocaron que la fundación del Consejo Regulador se pospusiera y no se hiciera oficial hasta 1944.”

  35. montillamoriles.es (opens in a new tab)

    “adquirió fuerza de Ley, el que otorgó el reconocimiento oficial a sus vinos”

  36. sherrynotes.com (opens in a new tab)

    “allowing PX grapes and even PX base wines to be imported from nearby denominations like Montilla-Moriles.”