Argentina: The Cool Years

Current releases from Argentina are strikingly different from the wines of just a decade ago. In recent years, Argentina’s top grape-growers and winemakers have sought out cooler, mostly higher-altitude sites and soils more conducive to making fresher, more complex, better-balanced wines. Moreover, since 2013 Argentina has experienced a succession of cool vintages, and this weather trend has further intensified the shift away from porty, high-octane reds with dried-fruit character. The result has been a greater number of outstanding bottlings than ever before.

Vineyards in San Juan, part of the semi-desert Cuyo region

A Growing Focus on Soils and Terroir

The Uco Valley, located to the south of Luján de Cuyo in Argentina’s dominant Mendoza region, is currently the most exciting wine-producing region in Argentina as this area offers a dizzying range of soils, exposures, altitudes and microclimates. It’s generally cooler than Luján de Cuyo and includes the highest vineyards in the Mendoza region. Particularly wide diurnal shifts in its higher-altitude vineyards bring extra flavor intensity and preserve acidity in the grapes. In recent years Argentina has been introducing a new Indicación Geográfica, or IG, system to highlight locations with special attributes, and it’s no coincidence that many of these new place names are in the Uco Valley.

Increasingly, Mendoza’s best producers are seeking out soil rich in calcium carbonate, the main component of limestone and chalk. Not only does this type of soil produce wines with pungent saline minerality and extra inner-mouth energy and tension, but it can provide a near-ideal combination of drainage and water retention for a hot, arid climate where viticulture depends on irrigation. According to Alejandro Vigil, who is responsible for the Catena Zapata wines and his own label Bodega Aleanna, limestone is critical for getting adequate but controlled water retention. “Limestone can absorb 50% of its volume in water,” he told me, “and this is very important for maintaining the hydric status of the vines.”

The hottest cool spot in the Uco Valley these days is the high-altitude Gualtallary, which was considered essentially too cold for wine production barely a decade ago but is now already producing extraordinary wines from limestone-based soil: not just Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon but also Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay and others. Some insiders even describe Gualtallary as a potentially excellent area for Pinot Noir. Other hot zones in Mendoza include Paraje Altamira, the first IG to be officially approved, and other, more familiar names like Agrelo, Las Compuertas, La Consulta and Vista Flores. Of course, the use of place names on Argentine wine labels remains quite confusing for consumers outside the local market, as many producers now promote the most specific place names possible, eschewing better-known subregional names like the Uco Valley’s three departments: Tupungato, Tunuyán and San Carlos. For example, Gualtallary is in Tunuyán, which is a department within the Uco Valley, which in turn is one of Mendoza’s three regions, along with the Central Region (which includes departments like Luján de Cuyo and Maipú) and the South Region.

I also tasted more wines than ever before from Salta, in Argentina’s extreme northwest, more than 800 miles north of Mendoza. The region features Argentina’s highest vineyards (the new Colomé Altura Maximá Malbec is from vines planted more than 10,000 feet above sea level). While it produces the majority of Argentina’s finest Torrontés bottlings, it also excels with Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon and is beginning to turn out top-notch Tannat as well.

The Cafayate Valley in Salta had drier conditions in 2015 than Mendoza