Grape Wars

Abstract

At the outset of the twenty-first century, Argentine wines have begun to command serious attention worldwide from the experts as well as from the wine-consuming public. The fact that Argentina is capable of producing superb wines should come as no surprise. Its diverse Andean wine regions have almost ideal conditions for production—excellent soils, a dry climate with substantial variations between daytime and nighttime temperatures and near absolute control over water. What is surprising is Argentina’s long-term hesitance to produce the quality wines it is clearly capable of. Whether in the early stages of the industry’s growth at the end of the nineteenth century or one hundred years later, quality wine production was hardly the norm: only in the 1990s did Argentine wines begin to realize their enormous potential.