Winemakers in South America are embarking on a new era – one of quiet self-confidence and curious self-discovery, bringing forth some of the most exciting and individual wines yet.
Distinctive regional personality is at the core of this new movement and it highlights a strong departure from the varietal- and style-driven wines that dominated the South American wine scene in the early 2000s. As the role and influence of foreign consultants diminishes, there’s a new breed of ‘flying winemakers’ on the ascent – natives who are shaping the wines and industry in South America, and beyond.
EARLY LESSONS LEARNED
South America’s wine industry has been moulded by immigration and intercultural exchange for centuries, but the 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a seismic shift in winemaking technology and viticulture which brought it up to speed with the modernisation happening worldwide. Winemakers, advice, technology and investment poured in from France, Italy, Australia and California, and the wine styles dramatically changed.
The white wines became fresher and fruitier; and the red wines became denser, riper and far richer than ever before. The proliferation of the first small oak barriques in the 1990s quickly overtook the larger – often colossal – foudres and toneles, and the wines soon compared with the richly fruited, fragrantly oak-spiced styles gathering pace elsewhere in the New World and Old. The formula for sweet, ripe fruit and toasty oak worked, and it is no coincidence that Argentinian Malbec,
