Wine Writing

Written for Decanter Magazine, October 2019

In the last decade, winemakers in Chile and Argentina have moved beyond what was seen as the final frontier for South American viticulture — into the cool climates and wild terrains of Patagonia.

Growing confidence and expertise; a quest for lower temperatures and greater water availability in the face of climate change; and intrepid adventurism is leading this generation of winemakers further south. The result of these explorations has revealed an exciting new dimension to South American wine: one with freshness, delicacy and acidity at the fore.

Pioneering Patagonian viticulture

The sparsely populated wilderness of Patagonia, at the tail end of the continent, has enraptured voyagers for centuries. When the famed 16th century explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed around these southern archipelagoes, he described it as the land of giants — the land of the patagón.

Patagonia is nothing short of giant: 1 million km² of land surrounded by three oceans. Awe-inspiring landscapes range from hanging glaciers, mountain peaks, dense forests, snowcapped volcanoes, wind-whipped deserts and crystal-clear lakes.

In Argentina, Patagonia begins at the Huincul Fault, or the Neuquén Basin, where the Río Negro runs eastwards, providing fertile lands which have been planted with vines for over a century. No-one, however, dared plant further south where temperatures dropped, winds picked up and conditions grew harsher. The feasible viticultural limit was cut off at 39°S.

What Patagonia did proffer though, was excellent fly fishing. And it was on one such fishing trip, that Mendoza vigneron Bernardo Weinert pondered how the conditions looked remarkably similar to another favourite fishing spot of his, Oregon in the US, where he’d tasted decent local wine before.

In 1991, Bernardo took his winemaker’s son, Roberto de la Motta, on the 1,500km drive south from Mendoza with a truck filled with 800 vines to plant in this virgin terrain. The local agriculture institute laughed Bernardo and Roberto out of the office, and instead they went door to door asking locals to plant vines in their gardens.

“My mission was to trial the vines in different sites, and then buy the grapes from the owners to make wine,” says Bernardo. Within three years the vines had their first fruit and it was enough to convince Weinert to buy land and plant 27 hectares in El Hoyo at 42°S.

He planted cool climate varieties he’d known in Oregon – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling, Gewürztraminer – and also Merlot, “because I love nothing more than Merlot!”

That first vintage of Merlot drinks remarkably well today — resplendent with evolved berry and truffle aromas but retaining acidity and tension more than a decade later. The greatest fruit of that first adventure though is the intellectual seed sown, and the dissemination of vines to families in Chubut who continue making wine with these varieties today.

Valleys of the southern Andes

Small, passion-driven wine projects are leading the expansion of Chubut’s 100 hectare wine region. Most producers are tucked into the Andean foothills — where valleys offer some respite from the wind.

“Frost is a really big challenge, but we are somewhat protected from the wind here,” says Sofia Elena, winemaker at Contra Corriente — another vineyard started by keen anglers, who also have a fishing lodge. “This extreme limit of cool climate viticulture is what gives the wines here a unique profile — I’d never tried anything like it in Argentina before, which is why I came here to make wine.”

This intellectual stimulation and distinctive wine profile is attracting many Argentine winemakers to explore the region and its fresh and filagree wines — a world away from plush Mendoza Malbec…

Read the full article (including Austral Chile) on Decanter.com or in the October edition of Decanter magazine. By Amanda Barnes Decanter South America edition