Argentinian Malbec continues to sell well in the US basically as a cheap, big red wine. The danger for Argentina is that it will fall into the Yellow Tail trap, where nobody here respects the country for anything else, and wineries struggle to sell their products for more than the lowest supermarket price.
The US matters because not only are we the world's largest wine market; we are far and away Argentina's largest export market, and we are the only country likely to pay a premium for its products.
Argentine vintners understand this and will tell you that the challenges for the country's wine industry are 1) to introduce Americans to other grape varieties, and 2) to explain that terroir matters for Malbec.
The latter is tricky. Malbec is not the most interesting red grape in the world, even if it does thrive in the desert soils of Mendoza. Moreover, I'd be interested in a survey on
why American drinkers choose Argentine Malbec. Are the customers people who will sometimes buy a $35 Pinot Noir and know the difference between Willamette Valley and Russian River Valley? If so, that's ideal, because if you could demonstrate that Malbec from one part of Argentina tastes different from Malbec from another part, you start creating a premium market for enophiles. But what if most Malbec customers just want a wine that tastes like red?
My friends at Vine Connections, an importer that oddly concentrates on Argentine wines and fine Japanese sakes, invited me to taste some wines from Salta, Argentina, as part of the general push toward proving that terroir matters in Argentine Malbec. I said, "Yeah, that's interesting."
Salta is in northern Argentina, and supposedly has the highest-elevation vineyards in the world, higher even than the deserts of Mendoza. The temperature can change 50 degrees in a day, which is great for maintaining acidity, but does complicate farming. It produces only about 1% of the wine in Argentina, much of it Torrontés, but its reds are well-respected by Argentine wine cognescenti.
