by Ruth Tobias
Before potential can be realized, it has to be recognized. Case in point: Argentina. The raw materials on which major wine regions are built were always there, but it’s only been in the past 30 or so years that visionary producers have paid them the sufficient attention and respect required to transform the country’s industry into a world-class powerhouse. Among those pioneers is Paul Hobbs, founder of Viña Cobos.
In the spring of 1988, on a foray that in his words “wasn’t entirely intentional,” Hobbs found himself in Argentina after several days in Chile. He wasn’t expecting much: “The reputation of the country was so poor, and people that I respected, professors and industry people, said, ‘There’s really no point going to Argentina because all it can do is produce plonk.’ It was too warm and the soils weren’t really good for making good wine,” he recalls. But driving over the Andes from Santiago into Mendoza, he adds, “I was confused and a bit surprised: These good-looking vineyards . . . were superior in the way they were planted and the soils in which they were planted.”
His suspicion: that the country’s outside detractors “had probably flown into Mendoza; they’d seen the eastern part of Mendoza, which is very hot and very sandy.” To the west, where the mountains “taper off nice and gradually into a plain, it seemed to me to allow you to go [to a] higher elevation if heat was a problem.” In
This Article was originally published on The SOMM Journal
