Cosecha 2023 en Argentina: el Año en que se Quemaron los Manuales

The 2023 Harvest in Argentina: Throwing Out the Playbook

BY JOAQUÍN HIDALGO | MAY 17, 2023

For Argentine wine producers, 2023 was a year in which calendars were heavily marked in red. A year that kept the experts guessing. On the one hand, the harvest produced the lowest yields by volume since records began in the 1960s. On the other, quality came as a great surprise. Analyses turned up inexplicable figures indicating that, in some cases, the wines will achieve a superlative expression. Paradoxical as it might seem, these phenomena are closely related and reflect the two faces of mother nature, the balance being one of the great forces in this world. What she takes with one hand, she gives back with the other.  

This means that the year has produced both winners and losers, some Pyrrhic, some less so. Two thousand twenty-three is developing into a complex vintage that producers are only just beginning to understand. Described as “strange”, “uneven”, “difficult,” “two-sided”, “exciting”, “wonderful for those who were ready for it”, “frenetic for the impatient” or quite simply “a roller coaster”, one thing at least is clear now: the wines and vines are enjoying their autumnal rest. Everyone was affected, and each producer will have experienced 2023 differently, making it the perfect year to tear up your carefully laid plans and improvise.

On March 7th, Alejandro Vigil tasted grapes in the Torrontés vineyard, owned by Catena Wines, in the cool heights of Gualtallary. He decided to harvest the following week.

A Dry, Frosty Year

Ninety-five percent of Argentine output – coming from the Cuyo Provinces and Patagonia, except the Calchaquí Valley – endured a black Monday and Tuesday last spring. With a long-standing drought caused by three years of the La Niña phenomenon affecting variables throughout the cycle, the first blow came on October 31 and November 1. A widely predicted polar front swept over the continent from the south to the tropic line, bringing with it below-zero temperatures for several hours in the early morning. Buds were as long as 15cm in some warm areas, and they were scorched on the first night. Those who protected their vines from the frost saved most of their output but at great expense. Those who didn’t, risked a ruined harvest.    

This episode was the first unusual event of the vintage. According to the National Viticultural Institute, it caused the lowest yields by volume since 1960, with a total volume of 1.437 billion kilos. The frosts also explain accounts of anxiety, stress and worry about the price of grapes. One figure illuminates the latter concern. The price of white grapes, those worst hit by the frost, tripled this season, beating out the already sky-high inflation. Last February, a kilo of Chardonnay grapes rose to 2 US$ at the official exchange rate compared to 70 cents the previous year. Other varieties saw similar rises.  

The general drop in yields, which official bodies calculate as being 25% for the country as a whole, rose to 40-50% in the worst affected areas of Patagonia and the east of Mendoza. Interestingly, as the front came from the south, higher regions of the Uco Valley, where the slopes are steepest, were spared. The cold air, pushed upward by the wind, only rose to a height of 3,900 feet, and when the wind dropped, so did the freezing blanket. This meant that high-quality grapes in Los Chacayes and Gualtallary, for example, were saved, while Paraje Altamira and Vista Flores were struck hard.

Pinot Noir in Bodega Salentein’s Los Jabalíes vineyard in San Pablo. I visited on March 14th, the first day of the harvest.

A Brief, Accelerated Growing Cycle

While the frost and the subsequent need for the vines to recover might lead to expectations of a later harvest than usual, the summer months saw the pace speed up due to the drop in volume. With a leaf-to-fruit ratio heavily weighted in favor of the former, ripening went into overdrive during the hot, dry summer. Measured in degree days, the cycle was 12-13% hotter than the previous year, as reported by the Peñaflor Group in the Uco Valley and Luján de Cuyo.

Martín Kaiser, who heads up Doña Paula, explains this phenomenon: “In Ugarteche, Luján de Cuyo, we saw our highest average temperatures in January, about 30.5°C, reached for 125 consecutive days.” Depending on the region, there were between seven and nine heat waves. By early February, when the bulk of the harvesting of white grapes was done, the picking work had been pushed forward by almost two weeks. In some of the warmest areas, it occurred four weeks early.