Step 5
of 5
The Argentine Revolution
Argentina is quietly rewriting the rules. For the 30 years between 1990 and 2020, French oak was the answer to almost every winemaking question. New oak, big toast, lots of it. The wines became powerful, dark, internationally celebrated.
But somewhere around 2015, the country's best producers started asking a different question: what does Mendoza actually taste like? The answer, they realized, was being hidden under all that oak. So they switched. Concrete eggs. Large untoasted foudres. Amphora. Anything but new oak.
The result is a new generation of Argentine wines — lighter, more aromatic, more transparent about where they come from. The country's altitude, soils, and grape varieties finally get to speak for themselves.
