The Club’s October tasting featured Lee Isaacs presenting wines of a country that he is passionate about. Married to an Argentinian (he says that leaves him little choice about his taste for wines of Argentine), he visits the country regularly and has explored the wine regions from Salta in the north to Patagonia in the south.The Argentine wine industry goes back to the Conquistadores (although it’s the Italians who’ve had most influence on the wines in the last hundred years). The first commercial vineyard was established in 1557 and its purpose (in a nutshell) seems to have been to provide wine to keep the native populations too sozzled to protest at the Spanish occupation. That focus on quasi-industrial production has left its mark on Argentinian wines which have only started to explore variety and terroir in any serious way in the last decade. Fifty years ago the annual consumption was 90 litres per capita (Britain at the same point was drinking 3 litres per head).
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