It seems appropriate that for much of my recent stay in Argentina, the mighty Andes were obscured by a grey phalanx of cloud. This became an appropriate metaphor for what I was discovering about its wine industry, that dreary reality keeps interfering with the romantic ideal.
For Argentinian winemakers, their country made the wrong kind of headlines last year. Internationally, political ill winds blew back and forth across the Atlantic over the Falkland Islands, while the wine press focused on stories about rapid inflation, squeezed profitability and declining domestic consumption.
Meanwhile, beneath the cloud cover, wine producers are dissecting and...