Mendoza city was founded by Pedro del Castillo in the 1561. He was sent by Captain General Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza from the Spanish colony in neighbouring Chile in order to civilise the indigenous peoples largely made up of Huarpe, Puelche and Inca tribes. The Spanish developed a system of irrigation which had been originally devised by the Huarpe people. This enabled the cultivation of fruit - the first vineyards were also planted by colonizers – taking advantage of the area’s unique climate, sunshine hours, little rain, and abundant water supplies from the nearby Andes.

The great liberator Jose Francisco de San Martin trained his forces in the Mendoza before crossing to Chile to defeat the Spanish royalists in the Battle of Maipu in 1818, thus initiating South America’s independence from Spain, starting with Chile and Peru. When Argentina finally achieved independence the city of Mendoza started to stagnate rather than prosper. This was largely due to its relative isolation. But worse still in 1861 the city was reduced to rubble in a devastating earthquake which killed over a third of the population. Mendoza was re-established with low-rise buildings and irrigation channels to water the large number of trees planted along wide boulevards - allowing for easy evacuation in the event of another quake - and around pretty plazas. In 1884 the railway arrived to the city bringing with it new opportunities for growth.