Argentina’s winemaking history gets its comprehensive due in a chronicle from Mount, a freelance wine writer who lives in Argentina. He highlights the Mendoza region; its champion grape, Huarpe; and most-lauded winemakers, and sets the story in the agriculturally difficult landscape, the indigenous Incas and their irrigation system, and the Spanish, who brought the grapes and wine. Eventually, inventive winemakers recognized enormous potential but often encountered problems in distribution. Encouraged by mavericks like Mondavi, and learning from the industry revolution in California in the, Mendoza’s winemakers seized the moment just as they had improved the quality of their wines. In time, the once-maligned Malbec grape, which so flourished there that Robert Parker repeatedly forecast its and the region’s success. Mount’s impressive history, while repetitive at times, provides ample regional and global color in a lively addition to wine literature. (Jan.)
Adding to the growing body of work on wine history, wine journalist Mount traces the history of Argentinian wine from its beginning in the 1700s to the present day. To accomplish this monumental task in a digestible narrative, he focuses on one figure and one region but explains in the epilog that many other people and areas were also important. The result is an artfully written story of how a poorly developed wine culture grew into one of the best wine regions in the world. Mount brings to light a lesser-known wine region and explains how cultural contact beginning with Spanish explorers contributed to its current wine-producing status. The work is obviously well researched; the author includes notes and a bibliography, but citations are not included throughout the chapters. VERDICT This engaging, important, and accessible book fills a gap in the literature of wine culture and history.—Lisa Ennis, Univ. of Alabama Lib., Tuscaloosa
Oenophile journalist Mount debuts with a knowledgeable history of the upscale makeover of Argentine wines. Although wine grapes have been planted in Argentina since the 16th century, the beverage produced for centuries was generally cheap, low-quality plonk that only the natives would drink. By the time bodegueros (wine-makers) like Nicolás Catena began trying to upgrade their product in the 1980s, they were also hampered by outdated equipment and methods and unhygienic conditions. Catena and his peers learned from upstart California vintners, who took on the French and won a paradigm-changing 1976 taste test, that it was possible to create high-quality wines outside France. But at first they worked with Chardonnay and Cabernet grapes, wanting to improve Argentina's image with the type of wines everyone considered the best. The humble Malbec grape, almost extinct in its native France but doing well for centuries in Argentina's warmer, sunnier climate, was disdained as coarse and heavy. Yet once Argentina's bodegueros had modernized their facilities and methods to gain a foothold in the international market for fine wines, it was Malbec that gave put them over the top with "a world-class wine--wine that had a sense of place, of terroir. " In Mount's savvy recounting, Malbec and the U.S. fine-wine market grew up together; the wine's fruity quality suited American consumers, who were also attracted by its high value-for-money ratio. But many of the American winemakers who rushed into Argentina in the '90s, thinking they could duplicate the locals' success, came to grief over their inability to deal with local business practices, most spectacularly California's Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates. Mount skillfully interweaves multiple story lines and personalities, including foreign consultants like Frenchman Michel Rolland and American Paul Hobbs. Snappily if not elegantly written, this well-informed chronicle captures the distinctive nature of winemaking in a country challenged by an unforgiving climate and political and economic instability.
[Mount]'s written a book for people who are as interested in Argentina’s culture and history as its wine. That may disappoint Bacchus' most zealous acolytes, but the casual drinker should find the result lively and well-balanced.
[Vineyard at the End of the World]… excels at telling the personal stories of struggling and speculation.”
Gracefully interweaves history and geography with the harder sciences of agriculture, geography, and chemistry to tell a fascinating story.
Katie Tuttle - Boston Globe
Ian Mount takes wine lovers on an intoxicating adventure. Anyone intrigued by how Argentina has amazed the wine world will love this gripping tale of invention, breakthrough and revelation. I enjoyed this wide-ranging book tremendously.
Ian Mount has found an important void in the current library of wine books: Mendoza and Malbec. The history is fascinating.
The Vineyard at the End of the World is a fascinating account of wine-world alchemy: what happens when the old world and the new world meet on the Argentinean frontier. This book will convince you—as if there were ever any doubt—that, for international wine lovers, the golden age is now.”
The rise of Argentine wine and the improbable triumph of the humble Malbec—the Seabiscuit of grapes—is one of the great untold stories of globalization. As Ian Mount shows with great energy and feeling, the tale is as much about people and their dreams and obsessions as it is about the delicious drink that motivates them.”
A definite must-read for Malbec drinkers everywhere, and Argentine wine fans.
Wall Street Journal "On Wine" Blog - Lettie Teague
Gracefully interweaves history and geography with the harder sciences of agriculture, geography, and chemistry to tell a fascinating story.
Boston Globe - Katie Tuttle
A definite must-read for Malbec drinkers everywhere, and Argentine wine fans.
Lettie Teague - Wall Street Journal "On Wine" Blog
A definite must-read for Malbec drinkers everywhere, and Argentine wine fans.— Lettie Teague
Wall Street Journal "On Wine" Blog
Gracefully interweaves history and geography with the harder sciences of agriculture, geography, and chemistry to tell a fascinating story.— Katie Tuttle
