🍇Worth knowing

San Juan is for the curious traveler, not the box-ticker. The city itself is strikingly modern — rebuilt after devastating earthquakes in 1944 and 1977 — and surrounded by stark, beautiful desert; this is also fossil country, near the otherworldly badlands of Ischigualasto. Wine tourism here is younger and quieter than in Mendoza, with fewer polished tasting rooms and more sense of discovery, especially out in the up-and-coming Pedernal Valley.

For a wine traveler building a route, San Juan slots naturally onto a northern loop with Mendoza to the south and La Rioja and Salta further north. Come for the Syrah, stay for the feeling of a region just beginning to show what it can do.