If you’re a red wine drinker, the chances are high that you’ve enjoyed at least one bottle of Argentina’s most celebrated export at some time: its world-beating malbec wine. You can find a bottle in just about any supermarket that sells wine, but until now I didn’t know much about its story, so I headed to Mendoza with my Swoop colleague Cassia to find out. Anything in the name of research, of course!
The first sign we were in serious wine country was when we touched down at the airport, and were greeted by big signs that warned against bringing any fruit or vegetables into the region. Tourists are welcome, but pests are very much forbidden.
We were surprised at just how green Mendoza is. The city is in a high altitude desert, but as we were soon to discover, it sits among a vast network of irrigation canals that keeps everything cool and leafy – as well as providing the water that feeds the vineyards. They’re all fed by the melting snows of the Andes mountains that loom on the horizon. An hour’s drive away, the great peak of Aconcagua beckoned us to grab our hiking boots, but they would have to wait for another day. This trip was all about the wine.
Awasi Mendoza: A luxury lodge among the vines
As a base for our wine tour, we chose Awasi Mendoza, a lodge just south of the city in gorgeously landscaped grounds. I was very thankful for all that greenery as the desert would have been scorching without it. Instead, we could lounge by the private pool or sit among the vines. It’s a perfect place to decompress, especially in the early evening when we could watch the sunset from our private rooftop, complete with a crackling fire and a pile of cosy blankets.
There were plenty of activities on offer at Awasi—we could have gone horse riding straight from the property or spent lazy hours being pampered in the spa—but wine was the order of the day. After warming up with a tasting at the lodge, we were keen to explore further afield. But with around 100 wineries in the greater Mendoza area, it’s was so helpful to have a guide to help us make the most out of our time. Some people self-drive here, but this didn’t feel like the best idea when there was wine involved, so we asked our guide Gabriela to design a tour for us, centred on the Uco Valley, one of the newer and most popular wine producing areas.
Is Argentina’s wine really New World?
Argentina is described as a New World wine producer, but in truth they’ve been at it for centuries. The first vines were cultivated here in the 16th Century (not long after the Jesuits fell in love with Argentina’s other iconic beverage yerba mate), with Malbec grapes being brought here in the 1860s. That was a timely introduction, because just a decade later European wine production was devastated by the Phylloxera louse. Thankfully, this vine-loving pest can’t survive in high-altitude Mendoza, with the result being that the region now has some of the oldest cultivars in the world.
For all this tradition, Western wine snobs were always a bit sniffy about Argentinian wine’s mass market appeal. That changed in 1999 when the country gained its first appellation, and again in 2013 when it had its first wine to score a maximum 100 points on the wine connoisseurs’ tasting charts. Argentinian wine had arrived. And we were here to explore it in more depth.
Which wineries to visit in Mendoza
With so many wineries in the Mendoza area, it’s very easy to feel a bit punchdrunk when it comes to choosing where to visit. We put ourselves in the hands of our guide Laura, who arranged for us to visit one of the oldest wineries in the region, to get an appreciation of how this became such an important place for Argentinian wine.
The Benegas winery a short 20 km (12.5 miles) drive from Awasi in the Luan de Cuyo district. This is one of the most venerable of all Mendoza’s vineyards, and its founder Don Tiburcio Benegas was a true wine visionary. He was one of the first to travel to France to bring back cuttings of Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Chardonnay, helping to build the foundations to Argentina’s wine industry in the process. His great-grandson Federico still lives here, and remains hands-on in running the place.
Today, Benegas produces around 300,000 bottles a year, including wine made from some of the oldest Cabernet Sauvignons in the world. We got to see the whole process from the immense concrete fermentation tanks (Federico remains a staunch hold-out against modern stainless steel tanks) to the cycling of liquids through the ‘sombrero’ of grape solids at the top of the tank to convert all the fruits’ sugars into alcohol.
Given the cool high altitude climate, the cellars were the perfect temperature to let the wine age in its huge wooden barrels. I was surprised that everything in the cellar was damp underfoot: the team regularly water the floor to maintain the humidity. After an ageing process of up to 30 months to give the wine structure, it’s ready for bottling – or in our case, a tasting session.
What is the right way to do a wine tasting?
Like a lot of people, I’d done a rough version of what wine tasting should be like plenty of time. You know the score – a swirl of the glass in the light, a quick sniff and then a good glug. This made tasting with an expert guide like Laura something of a revelation. Every step of the pantomime I’d done was deconstructed to explain what was really going on.
First up was the visual inspection, holding the glass at 45 degrees. We were looking for a clear bright liquid, with no hint of sediment or oxidation. It was no surprise that the wine from Benegas passed with flying colours.
Next up was to check the aroma. That quick sniff was no good – Laura encouraged us to take two or three passes with our noses right into the glass to investigate fully with our eyes closed to really invigorate our olfactory systems. The multiple passes are so you can take in every level of the wine. The first was the aroma from the fruit itself. The second was all about the winemaking process: the longer it spends ageing, the more structure it gets. Finally, the third aroma was anything from the barrel itself.
When it came to describing what we were feeling, Laura assured us that there was no wrong answer. But with a bit of time and guidance I could definitely pick up on distinct characters – that the Cabernet Franc gave a peppery hit thanks to some shared ancestral DNA, which would get spicier as it aged, or the jasmine-like scent of the Chardonnay.
Only after we’d done a thorough investigation by nose were we allowed to actually taste the wine. The warm up had really opened up my senses. That flowery Chardonnay was now rich and buttery on my palate – the creaminess a result of malolactic fermentation. With the reds, I was now getting marmalades alongside the summer fruits, and quickly passing a spot test on which wines were younger and which had had more time in the barrel. The quick rule of thumb is that as wines age there are initially more tannins, though with each variety there’s a sweet spot where the character begins to soften, and the tannins become deliciously velvety.
Of course, the trick is to spit the wine out at the end to avoid over-indulging – and leave some space for a proper glass or two over lunch. It’s another good reason to arrange a guide. This is absolutely no place for a self-driving tour! As she drove us back to Awasi in the afternoon, Laura was quick to point out the places where the local police did random drink-driving tests.
That evening, we sat out on the roof terrace at our lodge, with dinner and a bottle of Malbec. As the sun went down over the vines, we held our glasses up at an angle and let the last of the sun’s rays turn ruby red as it passed through the local vintage. When we compared notes we were both in agreement: Mendoza was very good on the palate indeed.
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