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Here is the fork in the road, and it is all about elevation.

The warm, lowland style — “Shiraz.” In the hotter, lower vineyards of San Juan and eastern Mendoza, Syrah ripens to the hilt. The wines are deeply colored, full-bodied, supple and fruit-driven — sometimes frankly jammy, with sweet black fruit and soft tannins. This is classic barbecue wine, generous and crowd-pleasing, very much in the Australian Shiraz mould. Ample ripeness, lots of juice — but, from the warmest sites, not always much acidity.

The high-altitude style — “Syrah.” Climb the mountains and everything changes. In the high deserts of San Juan — above all the cold, stony Pedernal Valley — and in the upper Uco Valley and parts of Luján de Cuyo, the temperature drops and the poor, rocky soils rein the vine in. The results are more precise and vibrant: structured wines with fresh acidity and those savory, peppery, mineral, almost charcuterie-and-bacon-fat notes that lovers of the northern Rhône prize. This is where Argentina's most serious, age-worthy Syrah is being made.

There is even a third, southern footnote: young vineyards in Patagonia's Neuquén and Río Negro give fragrant, fresh, wind-cooled examples — simpler than the high-altitude stars, but lovely and aromatic. The whole movement toward fresher, higher, more elegant Syrah is recent, so it shows most in the newest vintages — Argentine Syrah is a grape very much on the way up.