Chapter 4
of 5
The discovery
For most of the 20th century, though, Argentine wine was a domestic affair, and not a glorious one. The country drank vast quantities of cheap, bulk wine — vino de mesa — and quantity beat quality almost everywhere. Even Malbec itself, despite its quiet success in Mendoza, suffered a second near-death: through the 1970s and 1980s, growers ripped it out in favor of higher-yielding varieties that paid better by the liter.
The grape that had survived phylloxera, the Little Ice Age and the 1956 frost in France was now being pulled up by its roots in the one country where it thrived. It might have been lost altogether.
