Argentina wine

Malbec arrived from south-west France and found conditions in Mendoza that suit it far better than its homeland: reliable sun, low disease pressure and altitude that keeps nights cold.

Altitude is the organising principle of Argentine wine. The Uco Valley’s high sub-regions produce noticeably fresher, more structured wines than the warmer lower sites, and producers increasingly label by these smaller origins.

Torrontés, a white variety with an intensely floral, Muscat-like aroma but a dry palate, is the country’s distinctive white.

Altitude is the organising fact. Almost all Argentine viticulture sits between 600 and 2,000 metres in the rain shadow of the Andes, and several vineyards in Salta go higher still. Height lowers the mean temperature, widens the gap between day and night, and raises ultraviolet exposure — which is what allows fine wine at latitudes that would otherwise be far too warm.

It does not, on its own, make wine better, and the industry's habit of quoting metres as a quality claim is marketing rather than evidence. What altitude changes is the temperature regime; what that does depends on the variety, the exposure and the year.

Water comes from Andean snowmelt through irrigation channels, many of them originally built by pre-Columbian and Spanish colonial engineering. Rainfall is negligible, so the industry is entirely dependent on that supply — which makes reduced snowpack a strategic risk rather than a seasonal inconvenience.

Malbec arrived from Cahors in the 1850s and found conditions that suit it far better than its homeland does. Argentina now grows several times more of it than France, and the variety's global identity is effectively Argentine.

Torrontés is the distinctive white: intensely floral on the nose and dry on the palate, and a crossing of Muscat of Alexandria with the old Criolla group brought by Spanish missionaries.