Anyone can be forgiven for not knowing there’s a desert in Patagonia that’s home to a rapidly growing wine industry. Patagonia, Argentina? Desert? Wine?
Yup.
It’s no question Mendoza is Argentina’s best-known wine region. And the mention of Patagonia usually brings to mind the glaciers of the southern tip of Argentina or the lake district and ski resorts of Bariloche.
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| Patagonia's desert |
But Patagonia is a big piece of real estate. In the northern, desert part of Patagonia, the climate is very different than the cold and wet that most tourists associate with Ushuaia, located in the extreme south on the shores of Tierra del Fuego, the jumping-off point to Antarctica.
Tourism, then, isn’t big business in Patagonia’s dry region where locals like to take newcomers to the top of a mesa and with outstretched arms say proudly, “Look—360 degrees of nothing!”
But while it’s true there’s a whole lot of nothing but scrubby plants holding on to sand for dear life against stiff winds and, in the summer, a relentless sun, there is some gold in that desert.
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| The Rio Negro Valley is Argentina's fruit basket. |
Oil and natural gas producers operate where the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean once was and where veggie-devouring dinosaurs later called home. And thanks to a powerful river called the Rio Negro that carries water from the melting snow of the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean, a small slice of that desert is today Argentina’s fruit basket.
As a passenger flying from Buenos Aires—and there are only flights from Buenos Aires in and out of the area’s main town, Neuquèn —you see hundreds of miles of flat, desolate, brown desert. But if you’re on the right side of the plane, you’ll also catch a lush, emerald ribbon of green. That’s the fertile Rio Negro Valley that blooms with apple, pear and cherry orchards whose fruit is exported to the U.S., Russia, China and elsewhere.
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| The Rio Negro that gives life to a new wine industry. |
This is a land of mesas, and between two mesas stretches the shallow valley where man has built a parallel canal and then linked the canal and the Rio Negro with crisscrossing streams that allow the earth in between to bloom. The green swath varies from between two and 18 kilometers in width.
More than 100 years ago, Humberto Canale bucked the trend to plant apples and pears and began cultivating grapes for wine. While other wine producers came and went as Argentina’s dramatic economic downturns flattened businesses, Canale was the last winery standing until recently.
In the ‘90s, an economic boom led some producers of table fruit and a couple of risk-loving business folks to join the Canale family in the wine business in arid Patagonia.
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| An asado lunch of goat at the Humberto Canale winery. |
I’ll tell you more about them in my next post, but in the meantime, if you spy a bottle of wine from Patagonia from producers such as NQN, Del Fin Del Mundo, Familia Schroeder, Canale or Universo Austral, buy ‘em. Buy the case.
The quality is exceptional, and you’d be surprised at what prices as low as $11 can get you. And you’ll learn the reason Argentine wines are gaining more and more shelf space in the U.S. as they cause heartburn for winemakers in Australia and elsewhere.
Next: Dinner with a contessa in the desert.