Wine Line: Tasting in South America

The Navigator and I decided it was time to taste South American wines. Our itinerary included four countries in 17 days with eight flights, five guides and, of course, wine. Here’s what we discovered.

Chileans like pisco sours, empanadas and drink more beer than wine. Chile started importing grape plantings from France in the mid-1800s. They thought they were planting merlot but it was really a grape called carmenere. It has a striking resemblance to merlot, hence all carmenere vines were mistakenly called merlot. Because the Chilean merlots were bigger, bolder and spicier than other countries’ merlots, a 1994 DNA check proved that those rustic merlots were in fact carmenere. Since then the wine has become Chile’s pride and joy. It has flavors of spice, black pepper, big bold dark fruits and soft tannins, and is perfect with meaty empanadas.

Flying over the Andes mountains was a thrill and so was Uruguay. The city of Montevideo is beautiful. Wine-making started there in the late 1800s when Italian, French and Basque settlers brought the grape with them from Europe. Uruguayans have recently latched onto the tannat grape for their defining wine. It is a dark red wine (maybe the darkest) and ages well with firm tannins. Producers like to blend it with merlot to soften it. We drank tannat when we visited an estancia. Our asado consisted of beef, lamb, chicken and sausage cooked on the parrilla. With the wine and chimichurri sauce, the meal was delicious and a highlight of the trip.

From Uruguay we crossed the Rio de la Plata on a high-speed ferry and arrived in Buenos Aires. Argentina is known for three things: beef, tango and malbec. We loved the meat and the wine, the tango lesson, not so much. Malbec has emerged as the country’s premier grape. Grown in high elevations, next to the Andes, the wine has inky black colors, dark fruit aromas and flavors of blackberries, chocolate and smoke. Argentinian Malbec works well with gamey meats like short ribs and lamb. Our flight to Iguassu Falls and viewing it from both the Argentine and Brazilian sides was spectacular.

Brazil has two major wine-growing regions and neither is producing a wine that they can claim as their own. However, a cold beer on Copacabana Beach can be an eye-opening experience. We toured the entire city and the Navigator spent time looking in expensive jewelry stores. I kept busy looking for the girl from Ipanema. We both struck out. We had a great trip and tasted three outstanding wines from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Cheers!

This story was originally published December 8, 2015 at 11:01 AM with the headline "Wine Line: Tasting in South America."