Torrontés

Argentina's own white was born in the Americas, a spontaneous cross of Muscat of Alexandria and Criolla Chica — the mission grape the conquest carried across the ocean for sacramental wine. From that union of the perfumed and the plain came the criolla family's finest member, a grape that exists nowhere in Europe.

Its element is altitude. In the thin, dry air of Salta's Calchaquí valleys — home to some of the highest vineyards on earth — intense sunlight and cold nights concentrate its extravagant perfume of rose, geranium and muscat grape. Then comes the trick that made it famous: the nose promises sweetness and the palate lands dry, crisp and faintly bitter — a scented mirage resolving into a mountain white.