Argentina is one of the great wine nations of the world — among the largest producers on earth — and it owes its fame to a French grape that had nearly given up at home. In the high desert of Mendoza, in the rain-shadow of the Andes, Malbec found a second life and made Argentina’s name1.
Quick facts
- Vines came with Spanish colonists in the 16th century; Mendoza was founded in 1561.
- Malbec arrived in 1853, brought by the French agronomist Michel Aimé Pouget.
- Mendoza, high in the Andean foothills, grows the great majority of Argentine wine.
Vines in the shadow of the Andes
Wine came to Argentina with the Spanish in the sixteenth century, as colonists and missionaries planted vines to make wine for the table and the altar. The city of Mendoza, founded in 1561 at the foot of the Andes, became the natural centre: a dry, sunny land where the only thing lacking was water, supplied by an ingenious network of channels carrying snowmelt down from the mountains1.
The Frenchman who brought Malbec
The turning point came in 1853. A French agronomist, Michel Aimé Pouget — an exile from the France of Napoleon III — was hired by the reforming statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento to modernise Argentine agriculture. Pouget’s nursery in Mendoza, approved on 17 April 1853, introduced French grape varieties including Cabernet, Pinot Noir and, fatefully, Malbec. That date is now celebrated around the world as Malbec World Day2.
Malbec’s second home
Malbec came from Cahors and Bordeaux in south-west France, where it made dark, rustic reds and slowly fell from favour. In Mendoza it was reborn. The intense mountain sunlight, cool nights and dry air gave Malbec deep colour, ripe fruit and velvety tannins — a plusher, more generous wine than it had ever made in Europe. The grape that Europe was forgetting became the soul of Argentine wine3.
A grape dismissed in France became, in the Andes, one of the world’s great reds.— on Argentine Malbec3
A river of wine
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, waves of Italian and Spanish immigrants poured into Argentina, and wine became part of everyday life. The vineyards of Mendoza expanded enormously to slake a huge domestic thirst, and for decades Argentina made oceans of honest, inexpensive wine drunk almost entirely at home — quantity far outrunning fame4.
The high-altitude revolution
Everything changed in the 1980s and ’90s. Pioneers led by Nicolás Catena Zapata pushed vineyards ever higher up the Andes — into the Uco Valley and beyond, well above 1,000 metres — discovering that altitude gave Malbec freshness and finesse to match its power. Foreign investment and ambition followed, and Argentina reinvented itself as a source of world-class fine wine5.
Malbec conquers the world
Today Argentine Malbec is a global phenomenon, poured everywhere from steakhouses to fine-wine lists, and the country has added the fragrant white Torrontés and high-altitude Cabernet and Chardonnay to its repertoire. From a purely domestic industry, Argentina has become one of the most admired wine exporters in the New World6.
Frequently asked questions
More from this day in wine history
See everything else that happened on April 17 — who was born, what was bottled, and which laws were signed.
Read more
References
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Argentina. www.britannica.com ↩
- South America Wine Guide — Michel Aimé Pouget and the arrival of Malbec. southamericawineguide.com ↩
- Catena Institute of Wine — The History of Argentine Malbec. www.catenainstitute.com ↩
- Wine Folly — Argentina: Understand the History Through Its Wine. argentina.guides.winefolly.com ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Mendoza, Argentina. www.britannica.com ↩
- Wines of Argentina — The Wines of Argentina. www.winesofargentina.org ↩
Recommended reading
Hugh Johnson
Sets Argentina and Malbec within the wider story of world wine.
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