Uruguay beyond Tannat
Tannat is undeniably the champion of Uruguay. Its hardy character and unbreakable personality performs well vintage after vintage and, as a result, Tannat is Uruguay’s most planted variety – accounting for more than one in four vines. But Tannat is not the only card up this small nation’s sleeve. Uruguay is actually home to a host of different varieties, spanning the vinous alphabet from Arneis to Zinfandel. And the huge range of wines to be found in Uruguay are all part of its heritage, while also being key to its innovative present and future.
Vines came to Uruguay, like the rest of the New World, in the hands of European immigrants, with the greatest influx occurring from the 1850s onwards. ‘We are all children of immigrants – from Italy, Spain and France, and each of them brought over vines on the boat,’ explains fifth-generation vigneron Gabriel Pisano, who makes Sangiovese at Viña Progreso as an ode to his Italian forefathers. ‘We also never had any regulations controlling what you plant.’
Although there was a rather large, government-driven vine pull in the 1990s that encouraged producers to pull out their hybrids and focus on Tannat, families maintained their identity through other
