Altos Las Hormigas Colonia Las Liebres Mendoza Bonarda Clasica Mendoza 2023 (from £12.49, Shelved, Hay Wines, Fenwick) For food and drink producers, there are certain benefits to working in a region world-renowned for doing one thing very well. Whether the product in question is parmesan, jersey royals or champagne, it means a lot of marketing has been done on your behalf before you so much as milk a cow or pick a potato or grape. But for the ambitious, it can be restrictive when it comes to making subtle tweaks. Argentine winemakers, for example, are proud their country has become synonymous with a single red grape variety. But rather than talking up their malbecs, many will be much happier showing off wines they make from other varieties, such as the super-supple, spicy succulence of Altos Las Hormigas’s refreshingly red plum-juicy bonarda.
Bodegas Atamisque Serbal Cabernet Franc, Uco Valley, Mendoza 2022 (from £16.95, Stroud Wine, Whitmore & White, Noble Green Wines) One variety that has come to be regarded as a potential next big thing in Argentina is cabernet franc. It lags behind malbec in terms of the area planted: mighty malbec has just under 46,000 hectares of the total 197,000ha Argentine vineyard, while cab franc has a rather meagre-looking 1,300ha. But, as a committed fan of cabernet franc in its French incarnation, I am often impressed by the slightly fuller, plumper but still fundamentally fresh styles currently being made in Argentina. Atamisque’s Serbal (in particularly lucid, graphite-and-cassis-scented form in the 2022 vintage), is a good place to start. And in an entirely different style, I loved the plushly creamy, but still agile Pulenta Estate XI Gran Cabernet Franc 2020 from Mendoza (£35.86, strictlywine.co.uk, vinvm.co.uk).
