🍇Luján de Cuyo

Luján de Cuyo — the birthplace

This is where Argentine Malbec became Argentine. In 1989, Luján de Cuyo established the first controlled appellation in all of the Americas, created specifically to protect old-vine Malbec at a time when growers were pulling the variety out. Some of those vines are now over a hundred years old — and here is the detail serious wine lovers prize: thanks to a quirk of local geography, many of Mendoza's vines grow ungrafted, on their own original roots — a rarity almost lost in Europe, where the phylloxera plague forced nearly everything onto grafted American rootstock. The wines from here, around the villages of Agrelo, Vistalba, Perdriel and Las Compuertas, are the region's classics: structured, dark-fruited, with that famous dusty, mineral finish. It is sometimes called the Napa Valley of South America, and it is home to landmark estates like Catena Zapata. Most of its wineries require a reservation, so this is not a drop-in day.