Focus on Argentina

Then the slumbering giant awoke. As Argentina's producers realized that they had to look to export markets to remain in business, winemaking in Argentina began its transformation. Many of today's best Argentine wines have barely five years of history. Flying winemakers, such as Michel Rolland, Alberto Antonini and Roberto Cipresso from Italy, and Californian Paul Hobbs, have brought international expertise to Argentina, and all of them are currently involved in multiple high-visibility projects. At the same time, there has been an explosion of foreign investment of capital by wealthy wine producers, luxury corporations and individual investors attracted by inexpensive vineyard land and by Argentina's warm, dry climate. Since the Argentine peso was sharply devalued in late 2001, land prices have looked even more attractive to outside investors.

Literally in just a few short years, Argentina has shifted its emphasis to the production of quality wine and turned its attention to export markets. Vine yields have been reduced dramatically as producers have changed their focus from quantity to quality. Large old wood casks have been widely replaced by new oak barriques. And a major wave of new planting has taken place in mostly cooler, high-altitude sites that are well suited to producing serious wines, such as the Uco Valley, in the foothills of the Andes, about 80 miles south of the city of Mendoza.

Despite the shift to quality wines and the widespread reduction of vine yields, Argentina remains a major wine producer, ranking number five in the world. But even today, less than 20% of the wine bottled in Argentina is exported. Demand in markets like the U.S. and the U.K. is rising, however, driven to a great degree by the increasing popularity of malbec, Argentina's most distinctive red grape variety.

Wine geography in Argentina. The province of Mendoza in west-central Argentina, just east of the Andes Mountains that form Argentina's natural border with Chile, dominates the wine industry in Argentina, producing three-quarters of the country's wine. For many wine lovers around the world, Mendoza is Argentine wine. Virtually all photos you're likely to see of the vineyards of Mendoza show in the background the towering snow-capped Andes, the highest peaks of which dwarf the tallest mountains in the western U.S. Grape-growing in Mendoza goes back hundreds of years, but the first serious wines were made after a wave of immigrants from Europe arrived in the Mendoza region in the 1880s, at roughly the same time that this was occurring in Northern California.