- Argentina - Portal público de noticias de la República Argentina.
The quality of Argentine wines, which is renowned at a worldwide level, reflects an enological culture characterized by prizes, large investments, specific publications and touristic routes where the most delicious wine styles can be tasted.
The Argentine “wine-making miracle”, which is talked about so much lately, refers to the gradual production of higher quality wines. Thanks to foreign market contributions, the development of the above mentioned phenomenon has resulted in growing exports amounting to a 142% increase and monetary revenues accounting for 220 % in the last decade.
Experts point out that one of the reasons for this “boom” is the large invesments made in the sector. Large local and foreign capital investments have been made both in vineyards and wine holds, thus triggering more than 1,000 million dollar revenues in wine exports over the last 5 years.
On the other hand, businessmen and the Argentine State have come to an agreement in order to decide what global strategies to implement. The results achieved can be easily seen: whereas exports production reached 5% in 1997, the percentage of products exported amounted to 13% in 2006, thus accounting for an increase higher than 150%.
Other driving factors regarded as paramount for the sector development are the quality of the lands extending from North to South throughout the Andina region, its height and the wide scope of climates contributing towards the production of high-quality wines. In addition, new technologies have been used, and even more importantly Argentine people have shown a growing interest in their excellent wines.
Argentina is the sixth largest producer of wine in the world and the European Union and the United States are the Argentine wine grape varieties major buyers.
In search of new markets, Argentina has signed an agreement whereby enological practices with Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zeland and South Africa will be approved. As regards fine wines certifications, there exists a clearly growing trend towards having these enological practices approved, which has resulted in the production of 4 million hectoliters in the last twenty years.
Argentina is regarded as the best Malbec wine producer in the world. The Malbec grape is originally from Southwest France and the resulting wine is well-balanced and has this red fruit aroma that can be easily smelt.
Several Argentine provinces claim to be the cradle of famous wines and taking advantage of this situation, businessmen and authorities have developed manifold touristic routes so that visitors may be in contact with the way holds work, which are in turn provide accommodation and gentrified restaurants. There is no need to be an expert in enology to know about wines. You learn by tasting them and becoming familiarized with the unlimited number of wine options existing in the world.
These tours around wine holds involve crossing the provinces of Río Negro, Neuquén, Mendoza, La Rioja, Catamarca and Salta aiming at the sole idea of becoming knowledgeable about the wine-making process ranging from grape picking to grape pressing stages, the process of grape juice liquid fermentation in vats and the bottling of the resulting wine in oak barrels. Furthermore, visitors can enjoy wine-tasting sessions.
