A sizable area of Argentina lies well within the global wine belt, so it was natural that Vitus vinifera, although not native to that part of the world, found in the country a natural home. With 555,000 acres under vine, Argentina ranks among the largest wine producers in the world, surpassing many European countries. Yet, for many wine drinkers, Argentine wine has become shorthand for a single grape: Malbec. Plush, dark, widely available, and often at value prices, it occupies a familiar place on wine shelves. And, in fact, over the past three decades, Malbec has been Argentina’s export engine, particularly from the Mendoza region. By now, the grape is more associated with Argentina than it is with its native France, and with good reason as eight times more Malbec is planted in Argentina than in France.

But Argentina did not become an export-oriented wine country until the late twentieth century. Since Europeans have settled in the country, it has had a rich, deep domestic wine economy with one of the highest per-capita wine consumption rates in the world. Wine has been everyday fuel for Argentines for a few centuries, and vineyards were initially planted to serve volume, reliability, and price. Inevitably, this high consumption served another purpose by sustaining vast vineyard plantings optimized for scale and perpetuating deep viticultural knowledge, allowing Argentina to pivot to wine export simply by repurposing its robust viticulture infrastructure. 

Sources: Instituto Nacional de Vitivinicultura (INV) and International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV)

Source: Wines of Argentina

To understand why Malbec became Argentina’s ambassador, it helps to look not just at Mendoza’s landscape, but at how the grape itself behaves within it. In Mendoza’s sunny, arid climate, with controlled irrigation and long, predictable growing seasons, Malbec ripens fully and consistently without losing acidity, producing wines that are deeply colored, supple, and immediately approachable. Compared to Cabernet Sauvignon, which with firmer tannins, demanded longer aging, or Merlot, which can lose definition in warmer conditions, Malbec delivered texture, richness, and drinkability with relatively little winemaking intervention.

That combination mattered at a critical moment. As Argentina exploited export markets in the late twentieth century, Malbec offered a grape that was distinctive but not unfamiliar, and capable of scale without sacrificing softness or balance. Mendoza’s capacity to produce clean, reliable Malbec year after year aligned perfectly with global demand for accessible red wines, allowing the grape to become both a commercial engine and a shorthand for Argentine wine abroad.

Source: Wines of Argentina (https://www.winesofargentina.org/es/provinces/mendoza)

Susana Balbo with world-famous wine critic Jancis Robinson in London.

Featured January Amaro Wine Club Argentine wine: Crios Malbec, Mendoza (2023)
VARIETALS: Malbec

Susana Balbo is a family-run winery founded in 1999 by Susana Balbo, Argentina’s first female winemaker. Crios is the company’s export-facing portfolio, built around large production, consistent sourcing, short aging, and limited extraction to enable scale and internationally viable pricing.

The grapes for this Malbec wine are sourced from vineyards at 3,400 feet altitude in Uco Valley. The wine reflects the conditions that allowed Malbec to thrive as an export engine: ample sun, controlled water access, and predictable ripening. The destemmed grapes were macerated and fermented in steel tanks for 20 days and 40 percent of the juice was aged for eight months in neutral (third- and fourth-use) French oak.

FOOD PAIRINGS: grilled steaks, burgers, skirt steak, pork chops, roasted vegetables, mushroom pizza, empanadas, barbecue, hard cheeses, chocolate desserts, dulce de leche

If Mendoza built Argentina’s reputation worldwide, places like Paraje Altamira are now redefining it. Altamira sits at higher elevation and on older alluvial soils than many of Mendoza’s historically productive zones. Although the official 7,000-acre appellation (Geographical Indication or GI) did not exist until 2013, since the early 1900s, the area had gained a reputation for high-end Malbec and Semillon single-varietal wines. As the single-vineyard concept in Argentina began to take hold in the 2000s, the not-yet GI became known in the premium wine market, spurring the campaign for its own GI. The terrain includes calcium-rich stones, poor drainage, and cooler nights, The terrain includes calcium-rich stones, poor drainage, and cooler nights, which taxes the plants, leading to limited yields. Malbec grown in Altamira is one of the clearest examples of how Argentina’s future lies not in scale, but in specificity.

Source: South America Wine Guide

Featured January Amaro Wine Club Argentine wine: Rocamadre Paraje Altamira Malbec (2023)
VARIETALS: Malbec

Rocamadre is a project by husband-and-wife team Juanfa Suarez and Cecilia Duran, focused on expressing individual vineyard sites. Juanfa Suarez’s great grandfather began cultivating vineyards in Paraje Altamira in 1921, but his son, Juanfa’s grandfather, pivoted to growing apples and pears to economically survive vineyard crop fluctuations. Today, Juanfa is back to viticulture as a focus, farming 99 acres, but he and Cecilia vinify only 20 percent of the grapes, and sell the rest to surrounding wineries. The couple lives in the nearby desert with their young son Pedro, and the labels for their wines are from an original numbered series of artworks that were printed by artist Fábrica de Estampas.

In the cellar, the grapes undergo a long but gentle maceration and ferment along with partial whole clusters. The wine was aged 12 months in a combination of old neutral barrels and concrete containers, and it is bottled unfiltered.

FOOD PAIRINGS: grilled beef, roasted lamb, braised short ribs, mushroom risotto, lentils and legumes, eggplant dishes, charred vegetables, aged cheeses, alpine-style cheeses

Calingasta, in the province of San Juan, sits at extreme elevation in the Andean foothills, with vineyards planted well above 5,000 feet. The GI The GI spans the foothills of the Andes and the Andes proper and is designated by where three rivers meet to form the River San Juan: the Los Patos, which flows from south to north, the Calingasta, which flows from the west, and the Castaño, which comes down from the north. This confluence of waterways ensures sufficient water for crops that are planted in a desert. Conditions at such altitude include intense sunlight, cold nights, scarce water, and dramatic diurnal temperature shifts. These are truly marginal sites by any definition and create wines born of resilience and adaptation.

If Paraje Altamira is a small GI, Calingasta is tiny at less than 750 acres. The fact that vineyards were even planted there in the first place had to do with the wine consumption needs of the immigrants who worked in the local mining industry; as such the area still has small vineyards planted by the first settlers with over one hundred-year-old vines that have witnessed the birth, decline, and resurgence of a viticultural industry in the region.