(”If the sea were made of wine, everybody would be a sailor”)

- Taken from the menu at El Sanjuanino, home to some of BA’s best empanadas.

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So here I finally am - Buenos Aires, Argentina. It took me a while to get down here, but I wouldn’t give up for anything the experiences I’ve had in the past four months. Now it’s actually time to settle in and go to work.

That’s what I keep telling myself.

To ease myself into it, I’m flying to Mendoza tomorrow to spend the next week doing some serious tasting, and some serious meat-eating. This time I’m staying with my friend Pablo from Viña el Cerno - I’m sure that I’ll be writing all about his family and their wine while I’m there. First some background.

While it is far from being the only wine-producing region in Argentina, the province of Mendoza is definitely the best known - it has the longest history of wine-making, and Mendocino wines make up the vast majority of both the domestic and export markets. Most wine consumers outside of Argentina don’t know that there are vines anywhere other than Mendoza, and that anything besides Malbec is grown there. One of my ultimate goals is to change this - but despite some of the beautiful wines coming from the provinces of Salta, San Juan, La Rioja, and Patagonia (map), just to name a few, Mendoza is the heart and soul of the Argentine wine industry, as well as being at the foot of the tallest peaks in the Andes, and it is there that I must begin. (That and it’s the only place other than BA where I have contacts.)

I’ve always found it interesting that the development of wine making in Mendoza has a great deal in common - chronologically - with that of California. Although the first vines were planted centuries ago by missionaries, it all began in earnest in the late 1800’s with the first major waves of Southern European (primarily Italian) immigration.

(As a total aside, it’s worth noting that Jewish migration here in Argentina also followed similar patterns as that in the United States. Unbeknownst to me before my first trip down here, it started long before the second World War.)

Due to the huge demand for wine here, however, and unlike in the US, the government here has always been quite supportive of the wine industry. The story goes that immigrants from Italy, France, and Spain were sought out as they arrived at the docks of Buenos Aires and offered free passage inland to Mendoza on the brand-new rail system, if they would contribute to the rapidly growing wine trade. While I cannot for the life of me find where I read that on my last trip here and it must therefore go unconfirmed, it is definitely true that from 1885 and the completion of this rail-line through 1907, a series of laws were passed that even exempted grape-growers in Mendoza from paying taxes.

Many varietals were planted, but the ones that seemed to work best were from France: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Malbec - a grape that was much less known before it exploded across the foothills of the Andes. Now its fame in Argentina has so far eclipsed that of French Malbec, mostly from Cahors, that many consumers have no idea it’s not native to South America. There are producers in Cahors who are labeling their wine by varietal, instead of appellation, in the hopes of riding Mendoza’s coattails. (Using the name of the grape on the label, instead of the place of origin, which is how the wine is usually defined in France.) Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc are all made there, as are some truly impressive sparklers.

For more than a century now, the wine industry in Mendoza has continued to grow and flourish (and yes, they now pay taxes). It wasn’t until recently that the fruits of this were exported at all - believe it or not this was mainly due to the simple fact that Argentines were drinking more wine than they were producing. It is also due to this insatiable Argentine appetite for wine that the country developed a certain reputation for bulk wine production.

Starting in the past 10 years or so this is all changing, and with it the image the rest of the world has of the wines of Argentina. They have truly stepped up both the quantity and the quality of their vino, and foreign investments are pouring into Mendoza in the forms of capital, personnel, and marketing savvy, among others. That great ad campaign definitely helped - a row of beautiful Bordeaux glasses, each flawlessly superimposed with the landscape of a different region inside the glass - and I hope to continue the process. Spread the gospel, if you will.

First, however, I have to finish finding it. That’s what this week is all about.

(For their unwitting assistance getting my historical facts straight here, many thanks go out to Vines of Mendoza, All About Argentina, Argentine Wines.com, and most of all Argenvino. Also to The Wine Anorak for the map I stole from them. Special personal props to Gavin from Argenvino - apparently he started his blog just to document a research project he was doing while studying abroad, and he isn’t even in the business. Now it’s become a great resource for geeks like me. Plus, he’s from Connecticut. That’s 2 points for Gavin.)

October 21st, 2007 | vino