Argentina New Releases: Cool Times in the Desert

BY STEPHEN TANZER | JULY 6, 2017

Within just the last six weeks I’ve experienced global warming up close and personal: 92-degree late-May weather in Burgundy, 102 degrees in Walla Walla before the end of June, and the steam heat of a New York City summer. But somehow Mendoza, Argentina’s engine of wine production, a semi-arid desert region that could not produce wine without irrigation from melting Andes snow, has not had a classically warm, dry growing season since 2012 – until this year, that is. 

Following a string of average to cool years culminating – or should I say bottoming out – with the extremely difficult El Niño harvest of 2016, the 2017 growing season witnessed warm to hot conditions in summer, slightly higher than average rainfall, and reasonably cool weather in March and April. The crop was very small, partly due to losses to spring frost. Cooler temperatures and drying breezes after the humid spells enabled the fruit to remain healthy and early indications are that this vintage will produce very concentrated wines, whites as well as reds, with considerable aromatic complexity and freshness. It’s early days of course but some producers are already calling 2017 one of Argentina’s finest vintages of the past 20 years. 

Vineyards in Mendoza. Photo: By Wines of Argentina

Fresher Vintages and More Vibrant Wines

Still, it’s clear to me that cooler and less parched conditions are conducive to making more aromatically complex wines at somewhat lower octane levels. Argentina’s best growers and winemakers have gained a great deal of experience in recent years at getting their fruit ripe (but not overripe) under cooler conditions. Their grapes have benefited from longer hang time and somewhat better retention of natural acidity. The succession of cooler years from 2013 through 2016 has meant, at least at the level of serious producers, better-balanced wines than ever before, and, in the case of single-site bottlings, a growing number of wines that display distinctive terroir character. 

The Italian enologist Alberto Antonini, who is partner/winemaker for the Altos Las Hormigas venture and serves as consulting winemaker at several other wineries (in addition to consulting in Chile, Europe, the U.S., Australia, South Africa and elsewhere), told me that following four years that featured more rain and higher humidity than usual in Mendoza, “I don’t have the same feeling of being in a desert that I had when I started working here in 1995.” But he also believes that “these new weather conditions” are making Mendoza a much more interesting place, overall, for grape-growing. “I see more biodiversity in the environment and the flavors are becoming more interesting and complex. I’m not surprised by this as most of the world’s greatest wines do not come from desert-like conditions but from more humid places.”