Argentine vs French
A French grape, nearly forgotten
Malbec was born in the southwest of France, in the region of Cahors, where it has grown for centuries. There it produced wines so deep and brooding they were known simply as “the black wine.” For a long time it earned a quieter living as a blending grape in Bordeaux, where it added colour and flesh to the famous reds but rarely got to stand alone.
France, it turned out, was a hard home. Malbec's tightly packed berries are prone to rot in damp air, and the grape is sensitive to frost. Then came the blow that finished its French career: a catastrophic frost in 1956 wiped out an enormous share of the country's Malbec. Most growers gave up on it and replanted with hardier, more fashionable varieties. Only Cahors kept the faith, replanting its vines and holding the tradition alive — though by then the grape's days as a French star were over.
What France let slip, Argentina had already caught.
How a grape crossed an ocean and changed
Three years before that frost would have mattered, the story had already turned. In 1853, the Argentine statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento — determined to bring French winemaking know-how to his country — founded an agricultural school in Mendoza and recruited a French agronomist named Michel Aimé Pouget. Pouget arrived with cuttings of several French varieties. Among them was Malbec.
By the time French vineyards were recovering from frost and disease, Argentina had been growing Malbec for nearly a hundred years. The grape didn't just survive the move. It was reborn.
In the high desert at the foot of the Andes, Malbec found everything France couldn't give it: relentless sun, dry air that kept the rot away, and dramatic day-to-night temperature swings. The grape thickened its skin against the altitude — and in doing so deepened its colour, softened its edges, and concentrated its fruit. For why the mountains do this, see our Mendoza guide. The wine that resulted was plusher, rounder and more immediately lovable than anything Cahors had made. Argentina, it's fair to say, saved Malbec — and Malbec returned the favour, becoming the country's signature and its calling card to the world. Argentines mark the rescue every year: 17 April is Malbec World Day.
