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The Argentina Wine Project

Regions / Mendoza

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Mendoza is where Argentine wine lives. At the end of 2025 the province had 140,682 hectares of vines in 14,371 vineyards, 71.7% of the country's vineyard area. The total is shrinking, down 17,903 hectares in ten years, and the average vineyard is still only 9.8 hectares. About 55% of the vines were planted after 2000.

It's a desert. Wine Folly puts the rain at under 230 millimetres (9 inches) a year, with the Andes casting a rain shadow, so every vine depends on irrigation from Andean snowmelt, topped up with groundwater. El Intransigente credits the Huarpe people, who settled Mendoza and San Juan in the 15th century, with the first irrigation system. Altitude is the big variable. The soils are mostly alluvial, with sand, clay and gneiss pebbles washed down from the mountains. San Martín is the biggest department by area at 18.1% of the province, then Luján de Cuyo at 10.8%. Luján de Cuyo and San Carlos hold the most Malbec, at 22.4% and 14.7% of the province's total.

A bottle that says only Mendoza could hold grapes from anywhere in the province, so I read the smaller name underneath first and treat plain Mendoza as a starting point. When I open one, I'm looking for a producer who tells me where the grapes grew.

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Inside Mendoza