Up and coming Argentina

Haven't been asleep at the wheel... just lots of work, etc.  In addition I've been thinking a lot about Argentina's role/future in the wine world.  As I said previously, we had an amazing trip down there.  The wine, the people, Mendoza, Buenos Aires... all great.  They make world-class wine, yet I've been wondering how they are going to fit into the wine world of the future.
The investment that we saw in Mendoza was largely Argentine and European.  With Kendall-Jackson's departure from its Tapiz venture, there are few major US wine producers influencing the region.  The biggest exception is probably Paul Hobbs, a "flying winemaker" who has jumped in with both feet.
Examples of major European investment include:
Salentine (Dutch ownership), Altavista (French) and O. Fournier (Spanish). Clearly, one cannot have a conversation about Mendoza without mentioning Catena, etc.  In addition, there are a great number of very cool, smaller Argentine winemakers who show enormous promise (please see Dr. Vino's blog and his entries about Susana Balbo as a great example of this).  As you would expect, I’ll hop over the bulk players like Trapiche, Norton, etc. much in the way that I would hop over Gallo when discussing sparkling wine.
The major quandaries for wines from Mendoza are:

• lack of knowledge about Argentina and Argentina as a winemaking country
• lack of knowledge about its primary red grape – Malbec 
• a lack of major English speaking marketers.

Yet they have some amazing advantages:

• Price (with the peso to dollar exchange at about 2.8 and lower land and labor prices than anything I have seen in the industry they can keep their prices competitive for a long time). 

• Amazing land and location – the semi-arid dessert climate watered by highly managed Andean runoff makes it look like Walla Walla with water. 

• Determination.  Every wine region has determined winemakers and community support.  Mendoza has as much, if not more, than I’ve ever seen.  It may be partially borne by their cyclical economy or the

• Budding high-end tourism industry that will help spread the word.  Just think Napa 30 years ago and how influential the visitors to the region have been in preaching Napa’s virtues since then.  Limitless Argentina is a good example of this – for the wine region and the country as a whole.

The real question is how the pros and the cons will play out. In the end, it may be that all of the players will need to work together to put Mendoza and Malbec on the map as a quality region and grape as opposed to exclusively focusing on brands… something that many well established wine regions continue to struggle with… before their individual labels will take off and compete effectively for shelf space and consumer “mindshare” in the US.