ARGENTINA

Mendoza, where about 80% of Argentina’s wine is produced, is not known for overly challenging weather or severe vintage variation. To the contrary, this high-elevation desert region regularly benefits from plentiful daytime sun backed by cool Andean nights devoid of humidity.

Yet the harvests of 2014 through 2016 were anything but normal, with frosts, hail storms, rot and mildew, and even an El Niño year (2016) with drenching rains yielding wines that spanned the gamut of quality while often falling short of Argentina at its best.

Overall quality has proved to be high, especially among wines from 2018, a year that saw near-perfect growing conditions.

Fortunately for fans of Argentine wines, those difficult years are now largely in the rearview mirror, replaced by a more familiar and welcome batch of wines from 2017, 2018 and 2019. By and large, the current crop of wines, led by the country’s signature Malbec, is in top form. Overall quality has proved to be high, especially among wines from 2018, a year that saw near-perfect growing conditions.

“We consider 2018 to be very nice, with more grapes compared with 2017, which had the lowest yields in the last 50 years,” said Karim Mussi, winemaker with Altocedro and several other labels. “We had a warm and dry