Mendoza

Mendoza makes about three-quarters of Argentina’s wine on roughly 150,000 hectares irrigated from the Andes. The Uco Valley, at 1,000–1,500 metres, is where the money has gone: cool nights, stony soils and Malbec that sells abroad at prices Argentina’s old vineyards never reached. Land is cheap by European or Californian standards, but the economics run through Argentina’s inflation and currency controls.

Economics in brief

Developed vineyard plots in the Uco Valley have been offered to investors at roughly US$70,000–150,000 a hectare, and resale lots in the vineyard communities at US$38,000–55,000 an acre. Labour and land are inexpensive; the costs that bite are imported equipment, barrels and bottles paid for in dollars, and the swings of the peso. Export prices for the top Malbecs now run alongside good Bordeaux, which is what underwrites the land.