That was decades ago. Now, in the gymnasium-size, halogen-blanched whiteness of the ballroom of the Park Hyatt in Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina, I get a glimpse of just how far South American wine has come since my caneca of Isabella at Fazenda Itú in southern Brazil. It is the final day of Vinandino, a weeklong celebration of international premium wines held here every other year since 1993. Forty-two tasters sit at seven tables, each concentrating monkishly. There is no laughter, banter, or sense of community in this cathedral of sleek space. It is not unlike a roomful of students taking the SAT.
Later, at another kind of backstage—a small, all-male dinner at the chic villa from which Carlos Pulenta, the scion of one of Argentina’s oldest wineries, Trapiche, helped launch one of its newest and most spectacular, Salentein—I meet the country’s most revered winemaker, Don Raúl de la Mota. (“He got the ninety-four rating in ’92 from Robert Parker that changed the world’s view of Argentine wines,” three different guests inform me about the wise-looking octogenarian.) When, after a round of tasting that I don’t entirely spit away, I tell Don Raúl how astonished I am by the way wine has been transformed from a treat and selfish pleasure into a scored test, he enthusiastically agrees. We’re soon discussing Perón’s dictatorship, the fables of La Fontaine, the insidious effects of poverty on national behavior, and the extraordinary beauty of the woman we’d seen dancing the tango during the awards presentation the night before.
Mario yanzón, the master architect of Argentina’s grandest new wineries, famously answered a client who wondered if the project wasn’t getting a little too fabulous: “Do you want a work of art or a galpón?” (A galpón is a kind of rudimentary shed often found sheltering dismembered trucks and stray dogs looking for shade.) Yanzón’s Peñaflor winery is a work of art—a six-hectare, multilevel, subterranean theatrical experience of darkness, dramatically shaped spaces, brooding casks, and spotlit obras de arte. So is the Salentein winery, the cross-shaped complex at the foot of the Andes where four facilities, each one story above and one beneath the surface, join at a circular vault into which light cascades, creating a space that looks as suitable for high religious ceremony as it is for winemaking.
Architecture isn’t the only indication I see that the wine business in South America is spreading as extensively as Simón Bolívar hoped democracy would. At Laguiole, a wine-centric restaurant in Rio de Janeiro’s financial district, I ask for an exceptional Brazilian wine. José Augusto, a member of the 22-year-old Associação Brasileira de Sommeliers, makes what proves to be a fine suggestion: Tannat. Tannat, he says, is a grape from France via Uruguay that is undergoing a renaissance in Uruguayan winemaking. He thinks Dal Pizzol’s Brazilian version is every bit as good. It is excellent.
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