Introduction
How did the South American wine industry develop? What might surprise you about the variety of wines produced in South America? How has Argentina’s flagship red wine, Malbec, changed over the past five years?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Amanda Barnes, author of The South America Wine Guide.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
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Giveaway
One of you is going to win a copy of Amanda’s beautiful hardcover book, The South America Wine Guide.
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Highlights
- When did Amanda realize she wanted to become a writer?
- What was the motivation behind Amanda’s move from England to Argentina?
- Why did Amanda decide to write The South America Wine Guide?
- What will you learn from The South America Wine Guide?
- Why did Amanda decide to self-publish?
- How did the South American wine industry develop?
- Why don’t we hear more about Chilean Malbec and how did Cabernet Sauvignon become the champion grape of Chile?
- How has the style of Malbec evolved over the last 10 years?
- What is meant by “graphite tannins”?
- How do terroir and soil influence a wine’s flavour profile?
- What percentage of Argentinian vineyards today are planted with Malbec?
- How does elevation influence the characteristics of Malbec from different regions?
- How do climatic factors like solar radiation and ozone influence the intensity and brightness of fruit in Chilean and Argentinian wines?
Key Takeaways
- I loved that literature inspired Amanda to move to South America and then her fascination with the wines kept her there. She shares some terrific insights about how the South American wine industry developed, including the wild diversity of wines produced in the region.
- She also opens up the world of Malbec, Argentina’s flagship red wine, to us and how it’s changed over the past five years. As she notes, Malbec is planted in almost every wine region in the country so it’s an unparalleled opportunity to taste different terroirs. Some are made in the style of Pinot Noir rather than in the style of Cabernet Sauvignon.
- She also observes that even though trends have taken over the population of vines in different periods, diversity still remains in the old vines.
- I loved her story about going into the soil pits, especially since that’s where all great wine starts.
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About Amanda Barnes
Amanda Barnes is an award-winning British journalist and editor who specializes in wine and travel writing. She is an expert in South American wine and regions and a regular correspondent for international wine and travel publications (including Decanter, Fodor’s, SevenFifty, The Guardian & The Telegraph). She is currently studying to become a Master of Wine and is the author of The South America Wine Guide.
Resources
- Connect with Amanda Barnes
- Diary of a Book Launch: An Insider Peek from Idea to Publication
- Wine Witch on Fire Free Companion Guide for Book Clubs
- My Books:
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 74: Dr. Laura Catena on Malbec, Wine’s Health Benefits and Winemaking in Argentina
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
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Thirsty for more?
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- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Amanda Barnes (00:00):
Some of the best Malbecs today are more made in the style of a Pinot Noir than they are made in the style of Cabernet Sauvignon. And even though it has a lot more colour than most Pinots or lighter bodied varieties would, it can have that real freshness, brightness, that real approachability. I’m not talking about juicy, easy drinking Pinots. I’m talking about proper serious Burgundy so it can have the elegance and balance. The top winemakers here are showing particularities of terroir in different regions because you’re not covering it with oak or sugar.
Natalie MacLean (00:35):
That’s true. I like the expression graphite tannins. What does that mean to you?
Amanda Barnes (00:40):
You know when you suck on pencil lead or that kind of experience of more those kind of fine mineral tannins that aren’t blocky and intense, but they’re there. They’re solid, but they’re very fine grained.
Natalie MacLean (01:00):
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle please and let’s get started.
Welcome to episode 265. How did the South American wine industry develop? What might surprise you about the variety of wines produced in South America? And how has Argentina’s flagship red wine, Malbec, changed over the past five years? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Amanda Barnes, author of the South American Wine Guide. One of you is going to win a copy of her beautiful hardcover book. All you need to do is email me and let me know that you’d like to win. I’ll choose one person randomly from those who contact me at [email protected].
I wanted to mention a recent winner of the books that we’ve been giving away on the podcast, as well as some other books that you can still win. Jennifer Gross from Edmonton has won a copy of How to Taste a Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life by Mandy Naglich. I still have one more copy of Mandy’s book to give away. I also still have one copy left of Vintage Crime: A Short History of Wine Fraud by Master of Wine Rebecca Gibb. So let me know if you’d like to win this one, Mandy’s book, or Amanda’s book. By the way, you don’t need to live in Canada to win.
(03:05):
Before we dive into our chat with Amanda, I want to thank you for being such a huge supporter of my book Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much. Not only did it become a national bestseller on the Globe and Mail”s list this year, but it was also my publisher’s number one book of the year. I could not have done this without you. Thank you. If you haven’t got your copy yet and would like to support it and this podcast that I do on a volunteer basis, please order it from any online book retailer no matter where you live. It usually arrives in a matter of days. Every little bit helps spread the message in this book of hope, justice, and resilience. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at nataliemaclean.com/265. If you’ve read the book or are reading it, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected].
I’d also love to hear from you with ideas about who we should have on the podcast in 2024. I’m looking for guests who are great storytellers who can entertain and educate us at the same time. They could be writers, winemakers, sommeliers, chefs, or experts in other related areas such as wine and health, wine and cheese, wine and charcuterie. Do you get the idea? If you have any other suggestions on how to improve this podcast, please let me know. Okay, on with the show.
(04:41):
Amanda Barnes is an award-winning wine and travel writer and the author of a gorgeous book, the South American Wine Guide. Although she was born and raised in Hampshire, England, Amanda has been based in South America since 2009, specializing in the wines of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil. Her writing has been published in Decanter Magazine and the World Atlas of Wine, and she is the editor of the Circle of Wine Writers monthly publication. She joins us now from her home in Mendoza. Hello, Amanda. So glad you’re joining us.
Amanda Barnes (05:17):
Hello. Thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be with you virtually.
Natalie MacLean (05:21):
Yes, virtually. That’s the best we can do these days.
Amanda Barnes (05:25):
Yeah.
Natalie MacLean (05:27):
So before we dive into your wine career, do you recall the moment you realized that you wanted to become a writer?
Amanda Barnes (05:35):
It’s difficult to kind of align it to a moment. I think I was. I was quite an avid reader as a young child, so I would read a lot of different novels and fiction. And I think it was just kind of piece by piece the threads came together and I thought at one stage I was going to be a vet, like everyone work in a zoo. I wanted to be an actress as any kind of slightly annoying young child does want to be. And then I really started to think actually maybe I like writing. And actually it was when I was going to go to drama school for university that my drama teacher said that he was going to give my recommendation for Rada because he can only give one or two a year. And he said he was going to give me the recommendation, but that he really thinks I should think about studying writing first. So he saw that. And that I think was probably the advice that actually made me go, huh, maybe I will take literature and then I can do acting if I want to later. And then I really got into the flow of writing and journalism, and I started writing for newspapers when I was 15.
Natalie MacLean
Wow.
Amanda Barnes
So it was always something I did. And I did a lot of poetry as a child and had to read it in front of assembly and had lots of cringeworthy moments [laughter]. Reading…
Natalie MacLean (06:47):
What were you writing about at 15?
Amanda Barnes (06:48):
Love. Always, love.
Natalie MacLean (06:48):
Love. Oh, love. Okay.
Amanda Barnes (06:50):
Well, no, the journalism, no. As a journalist, I was working with the local newspapers, so everything from covering the local fate to police reports or sitting in at council meetings. But yeah, my poetry was almost always about rainbows [laughter].
Natalie MacLean (07:04):
Oh yes, well, as it should be [laughter]. And then you became enamoured of South American author such as Gabriel Garcia Márquez, A Hundred Years of Solitude, I believe. Did those writers inspire you to travel to South America?
Amanda Barnes (07:19):
Definitely. So when I was at university in London, I was studying comparative literature. The first year they actually offered as a bachelor’s. And I did as part of my entire course, I took Latin American literature and absolutely fell head over heels with magical realism, a genre that is quite prolific here, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one. Did my thesis on it in the end and just fell in love with the literature and with all the kind of stories that they waved together. I mean, magical realism is actually quite dark, but there was so much fantasy in there as well, which just really appealed to my sense of adventure. And I’d been kind of consuming South America from afar for a long time in terms of music and my friends, Latin America friends, learning Spanish with them. And so yeah, it was definitely literature that kind of inspired my big leap to South America along with other kind of cultural influences.
Natalie MacLean (08:13):
Now you’ve added wine to that consumption, but you ended up moving from England to Argentina. That’s a long way to journey away from family and home. What inspired you to actually move and live in Argentina?
Amanda Barnes (08:27):
Well, I just wanted to go. And at that stage I’d been working at a newspaper. I was editor of the local newspaper for a couple years. I wasn’t learning anything new. And we were in one of those moments of kind of crises in the press, well in the economy, but it also was impacting press. And I decided that actually if I’m going to make this jump, I may as well do it now while I was young and didn’t have to worry about things like mortgage or anything else. And decided to go live for a year, test it out, and if I wasn’t happy, come back. And I was happy.
Natalie MacLean
There you go.
Amanda Barnes (08:59):
I loved it. And I fell down the rabbit hole. That is the wine industry. And originally I wasn’t planning to come here to write about wine. I was going to write about gastronomy and travel, and I thought I had to learn about wine in order to be a better food writer, a better gastronomy writer. And then I started to discover that wine has everything: food, travel, but also history, geology, people. When you write about wine, you are writing about stories and families and places. And that’s what I absolutely love, looking at the world through the lens of wine.
Natalie MacLean (09:32):
I love that. I find that is what draws me to wine and wine writing in particular. It gives you a view into the world, an excuse to get into people’s lives and homes. So what inspired you to write the South American Wine Guide? So you’re obviously captured by the land and the people, but what sort of moved the dial for you to actually produce a book and especially such a big book, a beautiful book.
Amanda Barnes (09:55):
Well, I moved here in 2009 and there aren’t many books about South American wine, not even in Spanish or Portuguese actually. It’s quite limited the coverage relatively, if you compare it to other wine producing countries of the size and dimension. I mean, Chile and Argentina are both within the top 10 of wine producing countries in the world. So I spent 10 years really figuring it all out by myself in many ways, catching the birth here, there and everywhere, and trying to figure out how to get to these far-flung areas and what the wine was all about. It was through conversations, it was through meeting people, but it was very much grassroots, the whole experience of being here for those first 10 years. Now South America has changed a lot in 10 years. So anyone that’s coming here today will have a very different experience to what I did in 2009 or 2010.
But I think a lot of people started asking me, I was always writing for other magazines and websites, and I had my own website which I started I think in 2012, which was a winery guide and just somewhere where I could upload some of my experiences more as a blog. And I was writing for other books and people started to say, when is your book coming out? And I was like, ha, ha, ha, that’s too much work. And then I was like actually why don’t I write a book and give a platform for all these incredible places that just don’t have much of a voice? Everyone writes a lot about Mendoza, which is where I live in Argentina. People write a fair amount about Maipo and Chile, but there’s lots of regions in Argentina and Chile that don’t really get any coverage. And then there’s other countries Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, which are really underserved in terms of international writers covering these regions. And the wines aren’t quite as relevant commercially, but it’s still very interesting and I think it’s part of the fascinating story of South American wine.
(11:38):
And so I really wanted to write the book as an opportunity for producers of South America to have a bigger window to show themselves to the world and for people to get engaged in South American wine, and be able to have that basis to learn about the wine regions and have the confidence to try wines beyond their usual comfort zone. And I really think the reason that Burgundy and great wine regions of Europe so well known today, it’s not only because the wines are great, but it’s that accessibility of knowledge. It’s very easy to find out information about the different crus and the different producers. And I think my goal with the book is to make South America more accessible so that people can dive in with more confidence and discover the incredible wines, regions, and people that come from this beautiful and fascinating continent.
Natalie MacLean (12:38):
Cool. So you’ve kind of answered one of the other questions I had in a nutshell, what is this book about? But if you were to give an elevator pitch or something that you haven’t mentioned. Now there are lots of maps, for instance, how many maps are there?
Amanda Barnes (12:51):
Gosh, I think there’s over 50. I can’t remember. But that was a lot of work. So the book has several kind of sections. There’s more the traditional getting to know the grape varieties. There’s the getting to know the wineries. The main focus of the book is very much on terroir. So I really want to let people know what makes, because we can talk about Argentina in general and we can talk about Mendoza, but actually Mendoza is far too big. You’ve got a world of wine within Mendoza. So my goal with the book is really to dial down on those individual crus, if you like, and be able to explain what the difference is between somewhere like Junín in the east of Mendoza versus somewhere like San Carlos in the very south of the Uco GI Valley. And really be able to make those comparisons of terroir and go in and talk about the regional expression of wines, but also the experience of being there and how they feel different, how they look different, how the culture’s different, how the landscapes are different, how the food is different. All those that travel wine experience, which I think we also get through the glass.
And so there’s a lot of focus on terroir. And then I have travel tips, how to get around to these regions. where to stay. As well as terroir selections, wine recommendations for each region. If you really want to know these are the wines that I really recommend you try. I don’t do points. I think that’s very subjective. Instead, it’s more a guidance, a curation of the wines that I’ve tried and tested often several times.
Natalie MacLean (14:25):
Oh, that’s great.
Amanda Barnes (14:27):
And really this is. If you want to get to grips with this region, try these and then discover your own as well.
Natalie MacLean (14:34):
And do you happen to have that book close by? Oh, there.
Amanda Barnes (14:37):
I do. It’s right here.
Natalie MacLean (14:38):
How convenient. Hold it. It’s beautiful. And for those who are listening to the podcast, we will put a link to it in the show notes because you sell it directly, but how much does that book weigh, Amanda?
Amanda Barnes (14:48):
Oh gosh. So it’s 1.5 kilos. But my first print run was two kilos.
Natalie MacLean (14:55):
What is that in pounds, I wonder. I’m not good at exchange.
Amanda Barnes (14:58):
It’s definitely a very big heavy bottle of wine.
Natalie MacLean
[laughter]
Amanda Barnes
More than a big heavy bottle of wine. But I actually for the second print, it’s got more pages but I lowered the paperweight. So you’ve actually in the second print, there’s actually more information, more wines, but lighter paperweight. It’s still beautiful paper though. I fell in love with the print process. That’s the amazing thing about publishing yourself is it’s really hard work. Don’t take it lightly. It takes a lot of effort and hair pulling and stress. I think I’ve shed five years from my lifespan doing it, but it is a beautiful experience. And just picking the paper and really dialing in on those little details, like your ribbon band, things like this. I’ll show you.
Natalie MacLean (15:42):
Its gorgeous.
Amanda Barnes (15:43):
Yes. So here picking your little ribbon band and the different kind of ribbons that you go with…
Natalie MacLean (15:48):
And even the color at the end of the pages. Lovely. I don’t know what the technical term. The gilt edge.
Amanda Barnes (15:53):
Its a gilt edge. So I call this my Malbec coloured edge, but then when I’m in Chile, I have to say Carménère edge.
Natalie MacLean (16:01):
Oh yes, of course. Right [laughter].
Amanda Barnes (16:03):
When I’m in Uruguay, it’s a Tannat coloured edge.
Natalie MacLean (16:06):
Of course [laughter]..
Amanda Barnes (16:07):
Truthfully [laughter]. It’s my. Here are the ribbons…
Natalie MacLean (16:09):
And the book, it is directly available from you. Can people buy it, say on other online retailers or it’s your site only?
Amanda Barnes (16:19):
Yeah so Academie de Vin are doing the distribution, so you can get it from their website, in Canada actually as well. And then also it’s on the Beast. That is Amazon, too.
Natalie MacLean (16:28):
Yes.
Amanda Barnes (16:30):
Although it’s cheaper to get it there.
Natalie MacLean (16:31):
Right. Well that’s good. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean that is a lot of work. Why did you choose to self-publish? Was it because it was such a massive book that traditional mainstream publishers wouldn’t take a chance on that cost investment or was it just you wanted to control the entire process?
Amanda Barnes (16:48):
Both. So I did speak to a couple publishers before and had two offers, but they would take complete intellectual property. The payment was also frankly rubbish. For the amount of time I was going to spend in investing two years in producing this book, the financial reward was nothing. But I have to be honest, the financial reward in self-publishing is worse [laughter]
Natalie MacLean
[laughter].
Amanda Barnes
That’s not the motivation. But that was part of another reason not to go with the traditional publishers. And then also the space they just didn’t want to let me have. I’ve got over 500 pages in this book, and I think in every discussion it was getting it down to less than 200. And often the conversation about not covering Uruguay or Peru or Bolivia, only Argentina and Chile. And I just felt that that was doing a complete disservice to South America and also to what I’d invested the last decade of my life in.
Natalie MacLean
Right.
Amanda Barnes
And so I really wanted to have that complete creative control and intellectual property. And it’s not for the faint hearted. I had to learn everything. And that’s the whole reason this is by Amanda Barnes and Amigos is because I not only relied on the help of friends, amigos, to give me information about regions, to spend time with me in vineyards and walking the dirt and tasting wines together, but also a lot of friends helped me, guided me through that wine writing publishing process. So other self-published authors like Simon Woolf, Launch both gave me really good advice how to kind of get started.
And then other friends completely outside of the wine sector as well. Catherine Roach, who’s a good friend of mine, was just my knight in shining armour when it came to the last section of getting through the print and making sure that all the proofs were down to an art. So there were a lot of friends involved. My friend Helen in Chile, who edited, who read through every single word twice three times to proof it. There were a lot of friends. All the photographers that contributed. There were a lot of friends that really helped me put this together. I couldn’t have done it without the help. I couldn’t have afforded it without the help of friends.
Natalie MacLean (18:56):
They are good friends, indeed. Wow.
Amanda Barnes (18:58):
It’s a difficult process, but a beautiful one. It’s once in a lifetime experience.
Natalie MacLean (19:02):
It’s a legacy for sure. There is that deep satisfaction of having produced something physical and a beautiful artifact. It’s a tribute. So well done.
Amanda Barnes (19:14):
Thank you.
Natalie MacLean (19:14):
Yes, absolutely. So let’s talk about the evolution of Argentina’s flagship red wine, Malbec. How and when did it arrive in Argentina?
Amanda Barnes (19:22):
So Argentina and South America in general have these kind of two history lines, which is quite interesting. The first one is what I kind of call the Criolla period, which is when those first lines arrived to the 1500s or actually the late 1400s if we’re going to be precise, but started proliferating in the 15oos. And these were the vines that were brought by Christopher Columbus and the conquistadors, and then stayed with the Spanish immigrants mainly, and the Jesuits as they were making their way around the continent. And those first vines were largely – there were two – the most important Listán Prieto and Moscatel de Alejandria. And from these, it’s very interesting because from those two varieties we actually had this entire family of South American wines born. Native varieties, which we call some of us call the Criolla varieties. There’s lots of different names. But in my book I have an early kind of family tree, a simplistic family tree for all these native varieties that came from those original ones.
So we have one of the most famous is Torrontés, which you get in Argentina today. But then you also have Listán Prieto. The original one makes fascinating wines called Pais in Chile and Chica in Argentina. Lots of different regions. Those varieties were the only varieties here until the 1800s. And then in the 1850s, we had this other second of era, I would say, of South American wine where we had the Bordeaux influence largely and the European influence again but mainly kind of more French in terms of intellectual influence. And then we also had these huge waves of Italian immigrants and Spanish as well, but noticeably Italian, which were really important, especially to the development of the industry in Argentina and Brazil and Chile to a lesser extent. Chile was further, it was harder to get around to Chile on the boat. So I think you’ve got the really hardy immigrants. You’ve got a lot more kind of Germans and those kind of northern Europeans that are used to those kind of treacherous cold conditions, whereas the Italians got stuck to the first area that they could get to which was Argentina and largely Brazil as well.
And so in that immigrant wave and also that intellectual exchange with Bordeaux, that’s when Malbec arrived along with a massive kind of treasure trove of lots of different European varieties. And it’s very serendipitous is when they arrived because it was just before phylloxera started, before phylloxera came to Europe
Natalie MacLean (21:50):
And wiped out all the vineyards for those who may not have heard of it. The root louse that kind of devastated.
Amanda Barnes (21:55):
Yeah, exactly.
Natalie MacLean (21:57):
And so they brought these kind of…
Amanda Barnes (21:57):
Phylloxera that wiped out all these vineyards. And just before that, we get Malbec, we get Carménère, which had gone which after phylloxera we thought was completely extinct. We didn’t think there was any left after phylloxera. And then it got rediscovered because it had been planted in Chile this whole time. And so we have this huge diversity of grape varieties that came in the 1800s. And when you add that to the diversity of native Criolla varieties, there’s a lot to discover here. And even though we have trends, and Malbec is one of those big trends which have largely taken over the population of vines in different periods, that diversity still remains in the old vines. So we still find really old vines of Chasselas from Switzerland, for example. For the Swiss immigrants, especially in Chile, we find which is practically not planted anywhere else, mainly here in Argentina.
So there’s lots of those relics of the 1800s, which have been kept in production by some producers. But yeah, the beautiful story of Malbec is that it came in the 1800s. Was planted quite widely. It actually thrived here. It did very well. It didn’t do so well in Bordeaux, which is where it was previously in Saint Émilion. They actually think there was more Malbec planted than Merlot. But before phylloxera, before this big disease wiped out all the vineyards. But anyway, it didn’t do so well in Bordeaux because it doesn’t set very well. It needs sunny, dry conditions for the fruit to set and give you a nice kind of homogenous production. And here in Mendoza we have dry sunny conditions. And so it actually worked really well and throughout Argentina’s Andean corridor. but it was only known as, and it wasn’t very valuable until the market rediscovered it in the 2000s.
Natalie MacLean (23:44):
And it didn’t well either or wasn’t taken to Chile, I assume. The conditions were not ideal there?
Amanda Barnes (23:51):
No, it was in Chile first.
Natalie MacLean (23:52):
Oh, it was in Chile first, sorry.
Amanda Barnes (23:54):
Yeah. So all of those Bordeaux varieties that came to Argentina in the 1850s actually came to Chile first. And I don’t know, I mean Argentina’s slightly more persuasive I think, even in the 1800s, than the Chileans. And actually they kind of stole the main ampelographer that was working in Chile.
Natalie MacLean (24:11):
Kidnapped him at night [laughter].
Amanda Barnes (24:13):
And one of the presidents, too. They managed to persuade him to come over to Argentina and start the viticulture foundation here. So that’s what happened. So he moved over here a couple of years later and then basically did the same as what he’d already been doing in Chile. So there are actually older vines of Malbec in Chile than there are Argentina, in the very far south.
Natalie MacLean (24:30):
But we don’t hear about them. I guess they didn’t really spread or thrive. I mean, I just don’t hear about Chile and Malbec much.
Amanda Barnes (24:36):
There isn’t as much. They didn’t spread to the same extent. So Chile was still very much. It was Pias. It was the very hardy Criolla variety that was really the one that did very well. And then Chile started pushing Cabernet Sauvignon and lots of different grape varieties. So Cabernet Sauvignon is the champion of Chile. Malbec is the champion of Argentina, but it went out of fashion. So in the 80s, so in the 70s, there was a period of which everyone was drinking a lot of wine, 92 litres per capita. And actually those lower producing, lower yielding varieties like Malbec, they weren’t very popular because you couldn’t keep up with that demand. So they were ripped out and more of those old Criolla varieties were replanted because they’re higher yielding. And then in the 90s, some kind of pioneers decided they wanted to make high quality wines to export.
And actually it was Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay that all the families were really looking at originally to bring Argentina to the world-class level. It was several kind of winemakers all at the same time, actually thought well why don’t we look at this, these old vines of Malbec, which actually give us a very similar quality to Cabernet Sauvignon. We get deep colour. We get lovely fruit profile. It’s got nice acidity. Why don’t we use that? Why are we working so hard to make Cabernet Sauvignon? What’s wrong with our Malbec? And there were several pioneers… who really focused in on the potential of Malbec and started making single variety Malbec taking it to the us. Actually it was the US that really paid attention. And then when the critics came back saying it was really interesting, it’s really nice, that’s when the Argentinians themselves started having confidence in that variety again.
And just then it went off like wildfire and became once again the kind of champion of Argentina after basically being completely ripped out in the 90s. But there were about 10,000 hectares or so that survived the kind of big vine pull. And so we do have some incredible old vines of Malbec as well, vines that are over a hundred years old and just have this incredible depth and richness to them.
Natalie MacLean (26:57):
Wow. And so, I mean the style I remember from Malbec when it was kind of at Zenith, at least in Canada and perhaps in the US, it was big and bold and fruity like the Australian Shirazes were at the time. What’s changed over the last say five to 10 years in terms of the style of Malbec?
Amanda Barnes (27:17):
I’d say that a lot of producers have moved away from that style. And I don’t think it’s just Malbec. I think it’s that big, bold, rich, fruity, quite oaky style was very much a trend in the 2000s. It was that kind of Robert Parker pushed trend where people were seeking that ripeness and that high ABV and that kind of sweet oak.
Natalie MacLean (27:40):
Sorry, what is that?
Amanda Barnes (27:42):
High ABV.
Natalie MacLean (27:44):
Alcohol by volume.
Amanda Barnes (27:46):
So I think that was a trend in the 2000s, and Malbec was definitely a victim to that trend. But I think what’s been really beautiful in the last 10 years or so is actually seeing wine makers have more confidence not to follow the trends anymore. I mean, we could argue that there is a trend in the other direction, but I think it’s more about the producers here saying, well actually let’s look at what Malbec has in its own. By itself. And there’s really been a focus on picking slightly earlier, maintaining that nice acidity that Malbec does have when you pick early enough, and enjoying those kind tannins that Malbec has. Those fine graph tannins that Malbec has without – when you don’t over ripen it and make it soft and plummy and rich – and really dialing down on the oak, being very sensitive to it and only using it as a way to kind of balance it out.
(28:35):
I think some of the best Malbecs today are more made in the style of a Pinot Noir than they are made in the style of Cabernet Sauvignon. And even though it has a lot more colour than most Pinots or lighter bodied varieties would, it can have that real freshness, that real brightness, that real approachability, but with – not really approachability because I’m not talking about juicy easy drinking Pinot – I’m talking about proper, serious burgundy. So it can have those kind fine tannins that serious burgundy has while having that nice elegance and balance. And I think that’s the way that the top kind of winemakers here are really looking and showing. And it’s also the only way in which I think you really can show particularities of terroir in different regions because you’re not covering it with oak or sugar.
Natalie MacLean (29:25):
Right, that’s true. I like the expression graphite tannins. I think you mean fine tannins, but why do you pick the words graphite tannins? What does that mean to you?
Amanda Barnes (29:35):
For me, when you suck on – probably I shouldn’t admit this – but when you suck on pencil lead or that kind of experience of more those kind of fine mineral tannins that aren’t blocky and intense. But they’re there, they’re solid, but they’re very fine grained.
Natalie MacLean (29:53):
Right, okay.
Amanda Barnes (29:54):
That’s what I mean by kind of graphite tannins [laughter].
Natalie MacLean (29:56):
Homework assignment [laughter].
Amanda Barnes (29:57):
I probably should start sucking on pencils.
Natalie MacLean (30:01):
[laughter] That’s okay. You do it for to be thorough with your research. That’s fine. You’ve given a lot [laughter].
Amanda Barnes (30:06):
Well, I have, when I’ve been with winemakers and talking a lot in Argentina, the obsession here is – and in Chile – is going into the soil pits. So digging a big hole in the ground and going in and looking at the kind of soil types and deciding how that has impacted the wine. And many of the wine makers will often talk about the influence. We’ve got some sub-regions here which have a high percentage of chalk of limestone, and so they’ll talk about the chalky tannins. And so I do when I’m there with winemakers, we do lick the chalk, we do lick the rocks
Natalie MacLean
[laughter]
Amanda Barnes
[laughter] Just to make sure though we do actually believe in what we say. We describe it as chalky tenants.
Natalie MacLean (30:43):
Sure, absolutely. And so, I mean – this is an ongoing debate in the wine world – but do you think so different types of soil create different types of styles of wine, whether it’s Malbec or something else, but is it just a drainage factor? Because we know, I think, that plants are organic they can’t really take minerals and translate them into the wine, digest them. But what do you think is going on there?
Amanda Barnes (31:07):
I think it’s massively a drainage, and I’m sure there are difference to nutrient uptake as well. In countries like Chile and Argentina, drainage is really important because you are mainly irrigating as well. So you really need free draining, so the roots go deep. But you also want some kind of water retention. And those kind of chalky limestone soils are very good at that water holding onto good amount of water retention. I don’t know the science behind it. I’ve had the conversation a lot with many different people. I’ve read a lot of books about it, but I don’t know that we can definitively say that this soil gives you this flavour profile. But I can say from experience that sandy soils give you lots of fruit, typically you have very kind of a very fruity but less structured wine.
Those chalky soils typically give you really nice acidity. And then when you get to some of the more volcanic soils of granite, I always find a real blood like iron notes coming through in the wine. So I do think anecdotally and through experience and through tasting, we can definitely see differences. And blind as well. So it’s one thing to be looking at a label and tasting it and knowing where it comes from. But if you taste blind as well, I do think – not always but I do think – you can certainly notice the difference. I’ve tested some winemakers here. One of my good friends who makes wines in Chile, he used to be making wine here in Argentina and he’s a real soil geek. He’s done so many studies into terrior and his PhD and all the rest. And I brought a handful of wines, like five Malbecs from different vineyards, different soils, blind, unlabeled bottles and I was like, go on man put your money where your mouth is. Tell me the soil. And he nailed it.
Natalie MacLean
Really.
Amanda Barnes
He got four out five, correct. Spot on. So I think we need to go further in figuring out the exact correlation and why, but I definitely think there is a correlation for sure.
Natalie MacLean (33:04):
And do sandy soils hold onto more moisture than the chalk soils?
Amanda Barnes
Less.
Natalie MacLean
Less. Okay. So they’re giving you fruitier wines, they’re retaining less moisture. Okay, interesting. Trying to keep it straight in my own head as to this does that. Okay. So what percentage of vineyards today are planted with Malbec in the country?
Amanda Barnes (33:24):
Well, Malbec is one of the most. I’ll have to look at my book to give you the actual percentage, but Malbec is one of the most planted varieties in Argentina. I think it’s a good, let me have a look. I don’t want to say anything that’s incorrect, but it is number one by a long way. So we’d have to work on the actual percentage. So we have 45 over 45,000 hectares of Malbec. Do you work in hectares or acres?
Natalie MacLean (33:50):
Either or is fine.
Amanda Barnes (33:51):
And then I think we have 200 or so. I think it’s at least a quarter.
Natalie MacLean (33:55):
Okay, so it’s still…
Amanda Barnes (33:56):
Significant.
Natalie MacLean (33:57):
Significant.
Amanda Barnes (33:58):
It’s very high. Or maybe it’s more like a fifth actually. Malbec is the champion grape, but it’s a great opportunity to visit all the different wine regions through one wine. In almost every wine region Malbec is planted in Argentina.
Natalie MacLean (34:12):
So people can do their own comparison.
Amanda Barnes (34:13):
It’s unparalleled. Yeah, it’s an unparalleled opportunity to taste different terroirs. That’s what I love about Malbec.
Natalie MacLean (34:20):
And how does it express itself at various elevations in the Andes? What happens to Malbac as it goes up the hill?
Amanda Barnes (34:28):
Yeah, so the important thing about elevation if we are looking at Mendoza for example. Typically you get cool areas, you go up in altitude, but you also get great diurnal range. So you might have actually, it might be slightly warmer during the day depending on where you are and the exposure and lots of other things. So it’s very hard to just generalize. There’s a lot of old books that say for every hundred meters you go cooler by a degree or just less Celsius. But that’s not true when you look at the actual intricacies of different valleys and shapes and soils. But typically it gets cooler as you go higher in altitude. But the most important thing is that you get those cooler nights and you get that real break for the grapes to respire and to have that cooler weather in the evening. And then you often get quite high solar exposure during the day and quite intense sunny conditions during the day. So that means that you get great ripeness, but you maintain that beautiful acidity, and that’s really important.
So if we’re in lower altitude regions towards the east of Mendoza, for example – which might be 6, 7, 800 metres – there you’ll typically get very rich, ripe fruit. It can be kind of slightly jammy in style as well, but less of that kind of acidity, less of that kind of tannin. The fruit will normally be slightly more on the red, ripe spectrum. Whereas as you start to move higher in altitude towards the Uco Valley, you typically get kind of fresher wine with floral notes, maybe like fresh black fruits, and then also higher acidity. And also they could be a bit more tannic depending very much on the region as well and the soil structure and all the rest. But that’s the kind of general term, although there are always caveats.
Natalie MacLean (36:10):
Sure, absolutely.
Amanda Barnes (36:11):
It’s hard to generalize.
Natalie MacLean (36:12):
But as you go up too, you talked about solar radiation because getting closer to the sun literally, so it’s not just sunshine hours or whatever higher temperatures, it’s actual solar radiation too that helps with ripening of the grape skins and so on.
Amanda Barnes (36:27):
It does, and if you look especially in Chile for example, you get there’s much more solar radiation than in Argentina, and so you get real intensity of fruit, really kind of notable. I think Chilean wine is one of the easiest to blind taste and spot from anywhere in the world, Chile and Australia, in that intensity of fruit, that real brightness of fruit that you get. That can be related to lots of different things beyond altitude as well. I mean the ozone and different things too. So it is very interesting but there are lots of different climatic factors at play. But yeah, Torrontés is another good example because if you compare the Torrontés typically in Salta, which is much higher altitude than here in Mendoza, you get really kind of fine floral notes. You get less brighter acidity. Whereas in those kind of lower, more traditional areas of Mendoza and San Juan where Torrontés were planted, they tend to be a bit kind of fuller bodied, richer, less acidity and more kind of citrusy fruit rather than the very floral top notes that you get in the higher altitudes of Salta.
Natalie MacLean (37:40):
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Amanda. Here are my takeaways. I love that literature inspired Amanda to move to South America, and then her fascination with the wines kept her there. She shares some terrific insights about how the South American wine industry developed, including the wild diversity of wines produced in the region. Number two, she also opens up the world of Malbec, Argentina’s flagship red wine, and to let us know how it’s changed over the past five years. As she notes Malbec is planted in almost every wine region in the country, so it’s an unparalleled opportunity to taste different terroirs. Some are made in the style of Pinot Noir rather than in the style of Cabernet Sauvignon as we expect. Number three, she also observes that even though trends have taken over the population of vines in different periods, diversity still remains in the old vines. And four, I loved her story about going down into the soil pits, especially since that’s where all great wine starts.
In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Amanda, links to her website and books, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online no matter where you live. You’ll also find a link to the free online food and wine pairing class that you can take with me that’s called The Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them Forever. That’s at natalie maclean.com/class. And this is all in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com/265. Email me if you have a sip, tip, question or if you’ve read my book or are in the process of reading it at [email protected]. Give me your suggestions for guests for the podcast and how we can improve it. I would love to hear from you.
If you missed episode 73, go back and take a listen. I chat about blending wine and medicine with Argentina’s Dr. Laura Catena. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
Dr. Laura Catena (39:50):
Malbec has an extraordinary history in the world since Roman times. It was very famous in the Middle Ages when it was called Le Vin Noir, the Black wine. And it was often used to enrichen. When the French had the 1855 classification, 40 to 60% of the blend of those wines was Malbec. The Bordelais realized that with Malbec, they could add this texture and colour to their wines, and so they planted it. If there’s a little bit of cold weather, the yields go down dramatically. Cabernet is much tougher. Merlot is much tougher, and it’s also earlier ripening.
Natalie MacLean (40:22):
Given that Malbec is such a robust wine, I would’ve never thought it was a delicate grape.
Dr. Laura Catena (40:25):
What happened was that when it was brought to Argentina in 1852, it was brought as this famous French grape that was planted in Bordeaux. I had a viti-culturalist from Italy and I asked him, I said why didn’t you plant some varieties from Italy here in your vineyard? And he said, the only thing that grows well and makes great wine in this vineyard of mine is Malbec. Malbec just did well. It just tasted good, and it made great wine.
Natalie MacLean (40:54):
If you liked this episode, please email or tell one friend about it this week, especially someone who’d be interested in the wines tips and stories we shared. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to look for Natalie MacLean Wine on their favourite podcast app. You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Amanda Barnes. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps an old Malbec.
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