Excerpted from my forthcoming book "Mendoza Wineries."

Argentina has a long, but only recently distinguished, history of making wines. For generations the emphasis was on making a huge amount of indifferent wine, the effect of which is still felt. Regardless of the past, the future of Argentina as a player in the world stage is indisputable.

In the mid 1980s growing international demand for quality wines at a reasonable price drove the winemakers of Mendoza to experiment with quality wine making, an experiment that continues to this day. Yields were reduced, oak aging was introduced, and new, cooler, vineyards were sought. This resulting wines drew the attention of winemakers around the world, and an invasion followed.

The high altitude region of the Uco Valley, with its abundant aquifer, was transitioned from apples and walnuts, to high quality vineyards. The altitude offered respite from the heat that plagues those vineyards closer to the City. Even when the vineyards were young, the advantages of the fruit, especially for blending, became overwhelmingly obvious. Wineries who had only before used the high alcohol and low acid fruit from the lower altitude wineries had an easy way to bring acidity and fruit to their blends.

It may be that these traditional wineries had set the bar, defining Argentine wines as being foremost Malbec, and secondly, highly alcoholic and acidified. Certainly the wine press were clamoring for exactly these type of wines at exactly the time they became available. The result has been to cement into the minds of those that sell, that these are the wines to sell.

This would ensure that even in the Uco, and in the rising regions even further to the south, that few other varietals would be planted, and that the style to make is the style that has a track record of selling. Few can fault this conservative approach, wine is a business, but it risks the future of the industry on what can almost be seen as the wine equivalent of a monoculture.

Malbec reigns, especially in foreign markets, but Cabernet Sauvignon is not only widely planted, it is very successful. It is also very different than Cabs around the world. With very soft tannins it is easy to enjoy young. Because of the name recognition of Cabernet Sauvignon, I have oft counseled being prepared to send Cab out into the world when the Malbec bubble bursts.

Sauvignon is not the only Cabernet of note in Mendoza. Cabernet Franc has shown its worth in the hands of several skilled winemakers. And yet another of the carmenet grapes (by association, not relation), Petite Verdot, shows amazing promise in Argentina. Few other regions of the world has been so successful at offering PV as a varietal.

Two of more grapes need to be mentioned, one black, one white. Tempranillo is a workhorse in Spain, and in Argentina it has proven itself capable if not notable. It has a poor reputation and too many examples have not reached the potential, but several producers have proven its worth. So to with Viognier, that white darling of the Rhone that has started to strike out around the world. The acidity of Viognier makes it not only ideal for blending with white wines, but as is traditional with Syrah, it brings the power to propel aromas in red wines, while adding a touch of much needed freshness.

Just as Argentina may end up needing to look beyond Malbec in the future, so too would it be wise to investigate a few of the common vineyard practices.

Green harvest is a term and technique that came into being only in the last few decades, about the same time that Argentina was reinventing itself as a wine superpower. The concept is that by reducing the amount of fruit that a vine produces, the resulting fruit will have that much more flavor and concentration. The practice in most of the world is to prune the excessive bunches of fruit around veriason, the point at which the grapes begins to turn color. In Argentina the grapes are pruned just a few weeks before the actual harvest. These nearly viable grapes are left to rot on the ground.

I would suggest that the efficiency of such a late green harvest be studied, especially in light of recent findings that the entire practice may be of dubious value. Further, in light of the real need for higher acidity in the wines, that these discarded grapes may contain a better way to acidify the wine. Perhaps they could be fermented and used in the blend, precisely because they are sour.

Which brings us to multiple harvests. Almost without exception the wines that I have found to be the most complex, the most to my personal tastes, have been blends of lots picked at different times. Early picking brings you acidity, critical for Argentine wines. Mid harvest grapes bring complexity and a mix of flavor components. Later harvest, what is normal harvest for much of Argentina, brings deep fruit and ample sugars that translate into high alcohol.

For those that can not afford the cost of multiple harvests, especially considering the low retail price they can expect, the middle harvest has shown to be of particular importance. The more traditional, later harvest brings great fruit and an abundance of alcohol, but the result is a wine with a single big flavor (it is not an accident that the food of Mendoza is similar). As pleasing as this can be, it lacks the complexity and structure compared to other regions of the world. Earlier harvests, with more acidic grapes, and resulting lower alcohol may be the key to wines that may not score as well with critics, but bring greater pleasure for the consumer.

Mechanized picking in Argentina is rare. There are enough migrant pickers available to make hand picking cost effective. That hand picking results in higher quality is only true in the case of skilled workers who pick discriminately, and who are prepared to return to the vineyards for multiple harvests. Using people to pick every bunch in one sweep greatly reduces the detritus that mechanic harvesters may incur, but the only other advantage is that it is easier to replace a sick worker than a broken tractor. Indeed, the one great advantage of mechanized harvesting would be a boon to Argentina, night harvesting.

Harvesting grapes during the day, especially when the vineyard is not adjacent to the winery, results in hot grapes. Trucks full of recently picked grapes ply the roads and highways during the hottest part of the day. This necessitates the common practice of using heat exchangers to cool the must and the ubiquitous cold soak before fermentation. Grapes that were picked in the cool of the night would arrive at the wineries healthier and ready to ferment.

There is less to be critical of about the fermentation process. There are plenty of professional winemakers that dutifully oversee every aspect, and yet… Reductive aromas, the rubbery smell that can overwhelm some wines, is all too common. In my regular blind tastings, I find that as many as 10% of the wines have some degree of this fault. At low concentrations these aromas can add complexity, especially if they are sought after and deliberate. At higher, and more common doses, the aroma interferes with and sometimes even ruins the wine.

This is a case of misunderstanding the role of oxygen and the procedures to ensure a healthy wine. It is the careful application of oxygen that prevents sulfur from bonding with hydrogen and creating mercaptans. With my apologies to any winemakers for over simplifying the issue. Keep the yeast happy, keep the oxygen levels in check, and the rubbery aroma will never taint your wines.

Micro-oxygenation is a wonderful buzz word, and one that is often used, again with some misunderstanding. True micro-oxygenation requires expensive equipment that ensures that just the right amount of oxygen with the tiniest bubbles possible, is run through the wine. Too many times in Argentina I have seen a tiny tube placed in the vat, connected to oxygen. The tube, tiny as it is, allows bubbles many, many times larger to bubble through the wine. The whole point of micro-oxygenation is to simulate extended oak aging, in a much faster fashion. This is especially important when oak alternatives like chips are used. Ironically the process was developed to deal with hard tannins in wine, tannins Argentine wines universally lack.

Oak. The turning point for wine quality in Argentina was the implementation of oak aging. For too many wineries this is the main, if only nod to wine quality. It is seen a panacea, with little regard to the many complexities of oak aging. Because of the economic realities of Argentina most bodegas find that they have limited choices in selecting oak barrels. Few realize that they are missing anything, as the concept of various types of oak and their treatment is not well known. Medium toast of whatever French oak they are offered is what they have. When they do try to supplement their barrel selection with American oak it is often Pennsylvanian (with tight, closed pores and little vanillic acid) rather than the Tennessee White Oak (big, open pores, lots of vanillic acid) that "American Oak" is known for.

The rest of the world has the luxury of creating complexity in their wines by mixing and matching the various types of oaks and toasts available. Few in Argentina have this option, and fewer still know they are missing out.

No matter how good the wine is, it can all be undone by poor shipping practices. From vineyard to boat requires a truck to either drive the great distance to Buenos Aries, or the shorter distance, over the immense Andes mountains to Chile. Either way the wine is subject to many changing temperature conditions. Once it does get on a boat, the problems just begin. Much of the wine exported from Argentina will cross the equator, meaning that six months of the year it goes from hot to cold (the usual) or in some cases the reverse. Either way it is one of the world's longest and most impactful examples of shipping wine. For all of that, almost none of it is shipped at any point in refrigerated containers.

Many of the problems of the wine and industry in Argentina can be traced to economics. For much of the world Argentina is somehow related to adjacent Chile (forgetting the huge mountains and completely different climates that separate them) and the prices of the wines are expected to be comparable. This is unfair to Argentina who is much more likely to be medium or even small producers of quality, compared to the factory style that defines much of Chile's exports. People have come to expect Argentine wines to be cheap, and that has kept the prices from reflecting the true economy of production, which in turn has stifled innovation, retooling, and further emphasis on quality.

Argentine wines are good, some are very good. They have amazing potential to become outstanding, especially given the relative youth of the vineyards in the Uco Valley and other quality regions. Economics plays a huge part in retarding the escalation of quality in Argentina, not only in the obvious ways, but in a final, almost nefarious way. The lack of imports into the country means that few winemakers have had a chance to taste other wines of the world, side by side with their own. Competition is the fuel of progress, and Argentina is only competing with itself.