Wine regions of the world, 3 Argentina.

Argentina is one of the most important wine regions of South America and also until recently one of the least known and not fully exploited. Now there are a lot of reasons for this and to understand them you have to look back at the history to understand the present.

It is hard to believe now that in the 1920s Argentina was the 8^th richest nation in the world. But during the economic depression that gripped the world the country slipped in to a steep decline, florin investment dried up, exports dropped and the rich landowners moved capital out of the country. A growing unrest from the poor and working classes lead to a populist rise of government of General Juan Domingo Peron.  He was influenced by his wife Eva and for a while turned the fortunes of the country around. In 1943 he came to power promising rapid industrialization, better working conditions and organised state controlled unions.  Now most of this was very popular with the poor but not so much with the rich and the military, who had rather thought as a general he would have been one of them.  Therefore, he was deposed and a new military government took control.

This was followed by a number of military government and from the 1960s to the 1970s.  The country suffered from stifling bureaucracy and wide spared corruption with inevitable social and political unrest.  In the 1980s the country had grown isolated and had dropped to 15^th place in the league of developed nations.  Inflation was running at almost 1,000% a year.  It is fare to say that things did not look good.

All very interesting but what has this to do with wine well in the late 1980s under President Menem political and economic stability was restored.  And with this came serious consideration to exporting goods and getting foreign investment and money back in to the country.

One of the exports was wine.  For to long the wine industry in Argentina, if you could call it a industry had stood still.  What was then the USSR produced more wine than Argentina and its export and domestic market had shrunk.  Most of what it produced was consider to be a rustic and not very refined wine so not much wanted.

But with the growing interest in new world wines some producer decide to go up market and produce wine of quality.  This was then exported and that brought in the necessary investment that was so needed and encouraged. A lot of time and effort was spent in sorting out the problems of wine production, having to relearn things and develop vineyards that had been long neglected.

Also a move away from traditional reds that go so well with good Argentinean beef and a lot of work developing white wine as well. Like most new world wines Argentinean wine is existing and varied and not afraid to blend and experiment.  And now as the country grown and is becoming one of the new economic supper country once more the money that will be spent on wine production and exporting will increase more and more.

Personally, I do not have a lot of experience with Argentina wine as such only having had the odd bottle.  But as a case study it is interesting to see what can happen with a industry that was almost a thing that time forgot to some thing that is now a major exsport for the country.